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Nathalie Sarraute, who died in :qqq, is now regarded as one of the

major French novelists of the twentieth century. Initially hailed as
a leading theorist and exemplar of the nouveau roman, she has come
to be regarded as an important author in her own right with her
own distinctive concerns. In this major new study of Sarraute,
Ann Jeerson oers a fresh perspective on Sarrautes oeuvre her
novels, her outstanding autobiography Enfance and her inuential
critical writings by focusing on the crucial issue of dierence
which emerges as one of her central preoccupations. Drawing on a
variety of critical approaches, Jeerson explores Sarrautes funda-
mental ambivalence towards dierences of various kinds including
questions of gender and genre. She argues that dierence is
simultaneously asserted and denied in Sarrautes work, and that the
notion of dierence, so often celebrated by other writers and think-
ers, is shown in Sarrautes work to be inseparable from ambiguity
and anxiety.
Ann Jeerson is Fellow and Tutor in French at New College,
Oxford. She is author of The Nouveau Roman and the Poetics of Fiction
(:q8o), Reading Realism in Stendhal (:q88), and co-author of Modern
Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction (:q8., rev. edn :q86). She
also co-edited the Pliade edition of Nathalie Sarrautes complete
works (:qq).
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH 6
NATHALIE SARRAUTE,
FICTION AND THEORY
c\xnni nor s +tni rs i x rnrxcn
orxrn\r rni +on: Michael Sheringham (Royal Holloway, London)
rni +oni \r no\nn, R. Howard Bloch (Columbia University)
Malcolm Bowie (All Souls College, Oxford), Terence Cave (St Johns College,
Oxford), Ross Chambers (University of Michigan), Antoine Compagnon
(Columbia University), Peter France (University of Edinburgh),
Christie McDonald (Harvard University), Toril Moi (Duke University),
Naomi Schor (Harvard University)
Recent titles in the series include
rrz\ \n\xovicz
Surrealist Collage in Text and Image: Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse
xicnor\s vni+r
The Family in Crisis in Late Nineteenth-Century French Fiction
r\tr oirronn \xn nni\x s+ixrsox (eds.)
Reading Paul Valry: Universe in Mind
xicn\rr n. rixx
Proust, the Body and Literary Form
trir c\xnrrn n\vrs
Reading the French Enlightenment: System and Subversion
tnstr\ +inn
Simone de Beauvoir, Gender and Testimony
\xrrr v\+sox
Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust: The Collection and Consumption of
Curiosities
rrovn on\v
Gender, Rhetoric and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing
A complete list of books in the series is given at the end of the volume.
NATHALIE SARRAUTE,
FICTION AND THEORY
Questions of Dierence
ANN JEFFERSON
iuniisuio n\ rui iiiss s\xoicari oi rui uxiviisir\ oi caxniioci
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
caxniioci uxiviisir\ iiiss
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcn 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org
First published in printed format
ISBN 0-521-77211-7 hardback
ISBN 0-511-03443-1 eBook
Ann Jefferson 2004
2000
(Adobe Reader)

for Mike
We can nd no scar,
But internal dierence,
Where the Meanings, are.
Emily Dickinson
Contents
Acknowledgements page xi
List of abbreviations xiii
Introduction :
i ni rrrnrxcr \xn ntx\x nrr\+i oxs
: Dierence and dissension :
Dierences and dirends :
Dierence denied .
Beyond compare
. Subjectivity and indistinction q
Self and other q
Dierential systems .
Abjection into art 6o
Abjection 6o
Words 6.
Scenes of narration 6
Art o
i i +nr nonv \xn srxt\r ni rrrnrxcr
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism q
Psychology 8:
Representation 8
Writing q:
Sexual indierence q6
Women, human beings and writing q6
Gender and the gaze :o:
Women writers :o
Identications :oq
ix
i i i orxnr \xn ni rrrnrxcr
6 Criticism and the terrible desire to establish contact ::q
Generic dierences ::q
Authority, heresy and reading :.
Strategies for contact :
Criticism and/ as ction :8
Same dierence: reprise and variation :
Fiction and autobiography :
Variations: repetitions and dierence :6
Internal breaches :6
i \ coxcrtsi ox
Death and the impossible dierence ::
Notes :8
Bibliography .o:
Index .:
Acknowledgements
Many people and institutions have contributed to this book. The stim-
ulus for rereading and rethinking Sarrautes work came initially from
my involvement with the Pliade edition of the uvres compltes, and I
should like to thank my co-editors, Valerie Minogue, Arnaud Rykner
and Jean-Yves Tadi for their comradeship, insight and encourage-
ment over the several years of that venture. Sadly, it is too late to thank
Nathalie Sarraute herself as she died while this book was in production,
but her generosity and trepidation helped in equal measure to guide
my own responses. I should also like to record my gratitude to other
Sarraute specialists whose work has invigorated and set standards for
my own, and I would mention in particular Franoise Asso, Sheila
Bell and Emer OBeirne. The participants at conferences on Nathalie
Sarraute in Tucson, Arizona and in Aix-en-Provence also helped to
enlarge my horizons. Others who deserve thanks for listening, com-
menting, suggesting and informing are Mike Holland, Alice Kaplan,
Catriona Kelly, Mark Lee, Karen Leeder, Toril Moi, Michael
Sheringham, G. S. Smith, Galin Tihanov, Wes Williams and the two
anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press.
I am grateful, too, to the Warden and Fellows of New College and to
the Modern Languages Faculty, Oxford both for granting leave and for
helping to sustain an atmosphere of enthusiasm for research and discus-
sion. I should also like to thank the Taylor Institution Library, The
Bodleian Library and the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris for their help
in making their resources so readily available.
Parts of this book have appeared in dierent versions in Romance
Studies, LEsprit crateur, Narrative Voices in Modern French Fiction: Studies in
Honour of Valerie Minogue on the Occasion of her Retirement, edited by Michael
Cardy, George Evans and Gabriel Jacobs (Cardi: University of Wales
Press, :qq) and Women Voice Men: Gender in European Culture, edited by
xi
Maya Slater (Exeter: Intellect Books, :qq). I gratefully acknowledge
their editors permission to reuse that material.
Finally, this book has been written for Mike who makes all the
dierence.
xii Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
T Tropismes
PI Portrait dun inconnu
M Martereau
P Le Plantarium
FO Les Fruits dor
EVM Entre la vie et la mort
VLE Vous les entendez?
DLI disent les imbciles
UP LUsage de la parole
E Enfance
TNTP Tu ne taimes pas
I Ici
O Ouvrez
OC uvres compltes
ES Lre du soupon
Ce que je cherche Ce que je cherche faire
Ce que voient Ce que voient les oiseaux
Conversation Conversation et sous-conversation
Dostoevski De Dostoevski Kafka
Lere Lre du soupon
Flaubert Flaubert le prcurseur
Forme Forme et contenu du roman
PV Paul Valry et lEnfant dlphant
xiii
Introduction
Nathalie Sarraute is tireless in her appeal to a common experience: the
inner world which she represents in her writing is, she insists, a world that
we share, a world in which dierences as they may appear on the surface
simply do not count. No other writer asserts this commonality more
strongly than Sarraute. And yet at the same time, she presents this shared
experience within a frame that is equally assertive about its novelty, in
other words, about its dierence. The claim for sameness is made in
terms and forms that simultaneously advertise their dierence from
what has gone before. This creates a curious paradox which is one of the
factors that give Sarrautes writing its characteristic and uneasy vigour,
and the energies produced by this tension seem inseparable from the
anxiety that is palpable everywhere in her work. One senses in Sarraute
a constant worry about the ways in which sameness and dierence will
be construed by those to whom her appeal to shared experience is
addressed. There is a fear that sameness will be traduced as an assimila-
tion into something alien, and an equal dread that dierence will take
the form of rejection and exclusion. Questions of sameness and
dierence are inextricably associated with anxiety in Sarraute. And yet,
paradox and dread notwithstanding, there appear to be no other terms
available to her for thinking experience.
This places her fair and square within the literary tradition of the
twentieth century. Nathalie Sarraute and the nouveaux romanciers with
whom she was for a while associated, were making a deliberate attempt
to respond to what Alain Robbe-Grillet called lpoque [. . .] du numro
matricule [the age [. . .] of the regimental number],
1
and to nd ways
of representing the condition of anonymity in which its subjects live. For
Sarraute this anonymity is coterminous with le foisonnement inni de
la vie psychologique et les vastes rgions peine dchires de lincon-
scient which we all share (Lre, p. 6) [the innite profusion of
psychological existence and the vast and barely explored regions of the
:
unconscious (p. 88)].
2
By the mid-twentieth century when Sarraute and
Robbe-Grillet were making these claims, the novel had long since ceased
to be a celebration of unique individuals or a mapping of social,
characterological or even physiological dierences, as it had been in the
nineteenth century. If Balzac or Zola could claim scientic status for
their elaborate ctional taxonomies, and if Flaubert could write of the
novelist as being like God, their twentieth-century counterparts sought
neither to categorise nor to master. Prousts narrator awakens on the
opening page of la Recherche du temps perdu to a world in which he
remains in a state of radical disorientation as he charts the detail of his
failure to recognise either the times or the places in which he nds
himself. Gide presents his readers with situations devoid of any of the
criteria to make the judgements which the behaviour of his characters
nevertheless seems to invite. And one of the more sensitive and thought-
ful of his characters is eventually driven to suicide because meaningful
dierences have vanished, and life appears as a series of innitesimal
gradations where the line of demarcation between being and non-
being can erupt quite arbitrarily at any point.
3
Moreover, if Sartre
chides himself at the end of Les Mots for having written of the
unjustied existence of his contemporaries in La Nause while exempt-
ing his own,
4
this is because, broadly speaking, literatures mission in the
twentieth century has been to implicate itself in the phenomena it por-
trays, rather than stand above or to one side of them. In existential
terms, literature and its creators have sought to participate in and to be
indistinguishable from the undierentiated world which they depict.
At the same time, it is precisely in this sense that literature claims to
dier from most other discourses which tell us how the world is, for these
appear from the perspective of literature to be based on a hubris of non-
implication, particularly at the level of language and form. What makes
literature distinctive in the modern world is not its exemption from the
conditions of existence, but its awareness of itself as part of them. Self-
consciousness rather than mastery marks the literature of the twentieth
century. And the consequence of self-consciousness has been innova-
tion. As the major novels of the twentieth century show, an awareness of
ctional form has led to radical change in those forms; and in the process
a dierent kind of dierence from the one that marked the nineteenth
century has come to be the hallmark of the literary. The prospect of
writing a sentence as banally conventional as La marquise sortit cinq
heures [The Marquise went out at ve oclock] has the modern novel-
ist quail: le cur lui manque, non, dcidment, il ne peut pas, [his
. Introduction
heart fails him, no, he simply cannot bring himself to do it] writes
Sarraute (Lre, p. o [p. qo]). But where Valry and Breton had
invoked the sentence as grounds for abjuring ction altogether, for
Sarraute it acts as a goad to produce something dierent. The
commonality inscribed in conventional ctional forms can only be read
as clich in the twentieth-century novel, and invoking a shared eld of
reference in these terms becomes nothing more than a sign of unthink-
ing replication. Instead, dierence becomes the index of self-conscious-
ness, the guarantee of literatures awareness of its own implication in the
things it speaks of. And it is this paradox which Sarrautes work
exemplies in a particularly acute form.
Paradox, as I have already suggested, tips over into anxiety in so far
as the texts appeal to sameness at the level of psychic content and its
assertion of formal dierence both assume an other to underwrite its
claims. Sameness and dierence become entangled with alterity when
the text comes up against the readers whose response it so urgently
demands. The twentieth century had already moved the reader to the
centre of the literary stage: Proust claimed that his readers would be not
so much readers of his novel as les propres lecteurs deux-mmes [the
readers of their own selves], the book being no more than le moyen de
lire en eux-mmes [the means of reading what lay inside themselves].
5
Gide saw the whole business of writing as one that was necessarily com-
pleted by the reader for whom the prime interest of reading was pre-
cisely the participation in the text that it required of him: Lhistoire
requiert sa collaboration [du lecteur] pour se bien dessiner, [the story
requires his [the readers] collaboration in order to become fully appar-
ent] he wrote in his Journal des Faux-monnayeurs.
6
And Sartre, too, saw the
reader as the ultimate component in the literary enterprise. [L]a lecture
est cration, [reading is creation] he armed, meaning that the
readers task is to create what the writer merely reveals.
7
For Sartre, to
write is necessarily to write for the reader, to respond to what he calls the
readers aspiration, and to oer him the chance of enacting his own
freedom. Yet for none of these writers did the readers alterity pose any
serious problem. As far as Proust is concerned, the work is either written
in the language in which the reader reads herself, or it is not. The
instructions for the corrective or completive moves that Gide demands
of his reader are written into his text. And for Sartre writing oers the
chance of release from the alienation which reader and writer share.
Sarraute, however, is painfully aware of the reader as an other whose
rules of engagement and interpretation do not necessarily tally with
Introduction
those that her own writing proposes. The readers alterity his or her
dierence is perceived as a potential threat to the patterns of sameness
and dierence for which the text is seeking the readers endorsement.
This problem does not just haunt the writing of the text or motivate the
formal experiments that Sarraute devises, for it is also acted out in the
situations that her works depict. The encounters between characters
staged in the novels rehearse these fears over and over again in scenes of
mutual incomprehension, misrepresentation or outright negation. It is
rare in Sarrautes ction to nd two characters who see things the same
way; and yet this is what each of them longs for from the other, and what
the text desires of its readers. Instead, the inhabitants of Sarrautes
ctional world nd themselves forced into frames imposed on them by
others, or absorbed into beings whose nature is repugnant and alien to
them, or else simply obliterated and rejected. Sarrautes subjects nd it
hard to hold out against a dierence in viewpoint which they can expe-
rience only as oppression or exclusion.
In foregrounding the problem of readerly recognition by this means,
Sarraute may go some way towards mitigating its worst eects by implic-
itly inviting her readers not to make the same mistakes as her characters.
But at the same time, in an era where we are constantly urged to
acknowledge our dierences (dierences of gender, ethnicity, and so on)
and to embrace alterity, Sarraute reminds us how risky any encounter
with an other is, and also how strong the desire for an echoing voice can
be. The result in her own writing is a constant and constantly uneasy
engagement with issues of dierence, whose very anxieties produce the
contradictions and reversals which give her writing its peculiar stamp.
It is these issues and the contradictory and inconsistent forms that
they take which this book seeks to explore, as it traces the moves by
which Sarrautes writing swings between a fear of dierence and an
acknowledgement of its necessity. I shall not be using a single theory of
dierence to chart these swings, partly because no one theory would
seem to be capable either of accommodating the variety of its
manifestations, or of adequately accounting for the anxieties with which
the phenomenon is associated in Sarraute. Moreover, while dierence
could be said to have been a central component of a great deal of
thought in the twentieth century, the concept has been deployed in a
whole range of quite distinct and not obviously connected contexts. In
the preface to his Dirence et rptition, Gilles Deleuze claims that the
subject of his book is in the air, and in support of this claim he goes on
to cite phenomena as varied as Heideggers increasing preoccupation
Introduction
with the philosophy of ontological dierence, structuralisms basis in
dierential systems, and the contemporary novels concern with
dierence and repetition both at the level of explicit theorisation and at
the level of actual technique.
8
Tempting as it might be to pursue the
philosophical approach to dierence as something that would encom-
pass all these other approaches, philosophy inevitably leaves out of its
concerns the manifestation of dierence as it impinges on the social, that
is to say on human relations. This is the sphere with which the novelist
is traditionally concerned, and it is a tradition which Sarraute continues
and elaborates. However, what marks Sarraute out in this tradition is her
acutely developed sense of what it means to invoke dierence within this
context of social and human relations.
For this reason it seems sensible to take Saussures Cours de linguistique
gnrale as a starting point for thinking about dierence, since, whatever
its limitations (and I shall come to some of these), it treats language pri-
marily as a social fact. Saussures langue is the social part of language
which exists only by virtue of a contract between members of a given
community.
9
Semiology, the science of signs which he envisages as the
umbrella discipline for his structural linguistics would, he says, study la
vie des signes au sein de la vie sociale [the role of signs as part of social
life], and thus constitute a branch of social psychology and of psychol-
ogy in general (p. [p. :]), that is to say precisely the social and human
relations with which the novel has traditionally been concerned. And
indeed, the scope of the project and also the condence with which it is
articulated have striking echoes of the ctional programme set out in the
Avant-propos of the Comdie humaine. Saussure and Balzac each promise
an all-encompassing schema that will both emerge from, and oer an
explanation for multiple dierences. Balzac, for instance, describes his
project as one that will provide a comprehensive mapping of dierences:
La Socit ne fait-elle pas de lhomme, suivant les milieux o son action se
dploie, autant dhommes dirents quil y a de varits en zoologie? Les
dirences entre un soldat, un ouvrier, un administrateur, un avocat, un oisif,
un savant, un homme dtat, un commerant, un marin, un pote, un pauvre,
un prtre, sont, quoique plus diciles saisir, aussi considrables que celles qui
distinguent le loup, le lion, lne, le corbeau, le requin, le veau marin, la brebis
etc.
[Does not Society, in accordance with the various milieus in which its eect is
exerted, make of man as many dierent men as there are varieties in zoology?
The dierences between a soldier, a worker, an administrator, a lawyer, an idler,
a scholar, a statesman, a shopkeeper, a sailor, a poet, a poor man and a priest,
Introduction
are, albeit more dicult to grasp, as signicant as those that distinguish the wolf,
the lion, the donkey, the raven, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc.]
But, he continues, underlying all these surface dierences there are basic
principles of organisation which it is the novelists task to reveal. So, he
rhetorically asks: ne devais-je pas tudier les raisons ou la raison de ces
eets sociaux, surprendre le sens cach dans cet immense assemblage de
gures, de passions et dvnements [ought I not to study the reasons,
or reason for these social manifestations, and discover the hidden
meaning in this immense collection of gures, passions and events.]
10
There is a similar combination in Saussure of a concern with
dierences in conjunction with a search for underlying principles. On
the one hand, he says, Le mcanisme linguistique roule tout entier sur
des identits et des dirences (p. ::) [The mechanism of a language
turns entirely on identities and dierences (p. :o)]; and on the other,
language is wholly a matter of principles most of which like Balzacs
hidden meanings are unknown at a conscious level to its practition-
ers: Une langue constitue un systme; [. . .] lon ne peut le saisir qu la
rexion; ceux-l mmes qui en font un usage journalier lignorent pro-
fondment (p. :o) [A language constitutes a system. [. . .] Its workings
cannot be grasped without reexion. Even speakers who use it daily may
be quite ignorant in this regard (p. )]. Both Balzac and Saussure
assume that the apparently chaotic variety of surface phenomena can
be explained by the recovery of some underlying system or set of prin-
ciples which will map out the world in terms of meaningful dierences,
but which are available only to the novelist (Balzac) or the linguistic theo-
rist (Saussure), and which those engaged in these phenomena exemplify,
but do not themselves necessarily grasp. The broad similarity between
the two projects (Balzacs and Saussures) lends support to the idea that
Saussures semiology might have relevance to the novelist seeking to map
the social world in terms of meaningful dierences.
In many ways we see Sarrautes characters seeking to enact just this
kind of approach in her novels: their passionate attention to the phe-
nomena of social relations turns them each into versions of Roland
Barthess structural man and his counterpart, homo signcans. In an early
essay on structuralism Barthes presents the phenomenon (of structural-
ism) not as an all-embracing theory, but as an activity entailing a certain
set of mental procedures and suppositions. Its object is man as the maker
of meanings (homo signicans), and its practitioners (typied as structural
man) are those who use the procedures of structural analysis in order to
6 Introduction
produce simulacra or imitations of social and cultural reality which will
reveal how its meanings work: La structure est donc en fait un simulacre
de lobjet, mais un simulacre dirig, intress, puisque lobjet imit fait
apparatre quelque chose qui restait invisible, ou si lon prfre, inin-
telligible dans lobjet naturel [Structure is therefore actually a simu-
lacrum of the object, but a directed, interested simulacrum, since the
imitated object makes something appear which remained invisible or, if
one prefers, unintelligible, in the natural object].
11
Both Sarraute as
novelist and the characters in her ction are perpetually engaged in
trying to work out and often precisely in terms of quasi-structural
dierential oppositions what the conditions of intelligibility are in the
world which she depicts and they inhabit.
The virtue of Barthess gloss on the structuralism for which
Saussurean linguistics provided the model is that by turning the theory
into an activity he reinstates the individuals whom Saussure had
excluded, and through this move structuralism itself becomes a part of
the social life which it simultaneously seeks to make intelligible. To this
extent Barthes quietly undoes the mastery that seemed to keep the
dierential system of structuralist theory separate from the phenomena
it presents. This question of mastery is one also addressed by Derrida
in his discussion of what he calls dirance, which, like Barthess
structuralist activity though with dierent emphases presents
dierence as a process rather than as a protocol or a blueprint:
Tout dans le trac de la dirance est stratgique et aventureux. Stratgique
parce quaucune vrit transcendante et prsente hors du champ de lcriture
ne peut commander thologiquement la totalit du champ. Aventureux parce
que cette stratgie nest pas une simple stratgie au sens o lon dit que la
stratgie oriente la tactique depuis une vise nale, un telos ou le thme dune
domination, dune matrise et dune rappropriation ultime du mouvement ou
du champ.
[In the delineation of dirance everything is strategic and adventurous. Strategic
because no transcendent truth present outside the eld of writing can govern
theologically the totality of the eld. Adventurous because this strategy is not a
simple strategy in the sense that strategy orients tactics according to a nal goal,
a telos or theme of domination, a mastery and ultimate reappropriation of the
development of the eld.]
12
Dierences here can never be pinned down, and dirance itself under-
mines key oppositions such as the ones between the sensible and the
intelligible, or between speech and writing; it is poised between the tem-
poral and the spatial senses of the word direr, and between the active
Introduction
and the passive senses of the sux -ance. Dirance is a more radical
version of structuralisms theory of dierence than Barthess structural
activity in the sense that while it is a process which produces eects of
dierence, dierences as such are never available to be grasped or
denitively mapped. Derrida everywhere foregrounds the elusiveness of
the dierential phenomena which structure our systems of meaning.
And in other discussions of dierence, he compounds this shifting
quality by showing how oppositions are constantly undermined, rst by
the fact that they always entail a hierarchisation of their two terms and,
second, by a tendency that the repressed term has of turning out to be
integral to its opposite in any oppositional pair.
13
While Derrida excludes
human subjects from his discussion of these eects, his account of the
instability of dierential phenomena parallels a discovery which is
repeatedly made by Sarrautes characters, and which is integral to her
own writing in its attempts to grapple with the organising principles
behind social experience.
Nevertheless, Derridas arguments about dierence remain ultimately
philosophical and are not presented primarily as relevant to human and
social relations. For all his claims about the inevitable lack of mastery
entailed by dirance, he avoids placing theories of dierence in situations
where their articulation could be seen in the context of human and
social eects, particularly as they are experienced by individuals.
14
For
this kind of approach one needs to turn to a dierent kind of thinking
about dierence. One of the earliest critiques of Saussurean linguistics
came from V. N. Volos inov who challenged Saussures conception of the
social on the grounds that it excluded the individual.
15
For Volos inov, like
his co-theorist Bakhtin, the individual subject operates the language
system within a social context which is always and unavoidably one of
social and linguistic conict. As a consequence, the particular lan-
guage system that is mobilised by a given speaker in a given context is
always just one, socially marked, language system that is inevitably at
odds with others. Linguistic dierences are inseparable here from social
dierences, and dierences of both these kinds have to be negotiated by
individual subjects every time they speak. The social and the individual
are not the mutually exclusive alternatives that Saussure presented them
as being, and every utterance is always perceived as an active interven-
tion in a social situation. Seen in this light, all language use has what the
English language philosopher J. L. Austin calls an illocutionary force,
that is to say that a speech act is precisely that: an action performed by
the utterance itself.
16
The absence of mastery here comes from the
8 Introduction
speakers inextricable involvement in a social situation, and from the fact
that speech is always an event, an intervention within such situations,
rather than a detached, constative comment on them. As I have already
suggested, this sense of implication in the phenomena it portrays is
crucial to Sarrautes writing. But more than this, the notion that speak-
ers activate dierent discursive systems, and that speakers and discourses
alike are bound to nd themselves in relations of conict with other
speakers and other discourses, is a major feature of Sarrautes world.
Dierence in Sarraute is frequently presented as an aggressive or at
least assertive diering from, and not just as a noteworthy if occasion-
ally disorientating dierence between. For this reason theorists of
dierence who deal with dierence as dispute or conict would seem
particulary helpful in illuminating dierence as it features in Sarrautes
work. I have mentioned Volos inov and Bakhtin, but I shall also be
evoking the work of Lyotard and Girard, both of whom though from
dierent perspectives explore dierence as conict. Lyotards concept
of the dirend addresses the notion of dierence as dispute or dissent
where dierence arises out of the incommensurability of two versions of
reality. More precisely, he is interested in those situations where one
party has available an idiom or what Lyotard also calls procedures for
establishing truth which simply do not accommodate or recognise the
experience or reality of the other party.
17
Conict here exists because the
terms of reference invoked by each party are not of comparable orders,
and the dierences at stake are dierences that result from the mutual
non-recognition of dierent discourses or idioms. This is dierence of a
dierent kind from the one implied in the binary oppositions of
Saussures structural linguistics, and it seems much more closely adapted
to social reality and questions of human relations than Saussurean
theory. Certainly, the conict that results from the non-recognition of
certain types of experience within established idioms is an integral
aspect of the worlds that Sarraute portrays in her work; and in their
dealings with others her characters are constantly alive to the possibility
of falling victim to the kind of dirend described by Lyotard.
There are, however, theories of dierence that treat the assertion of
dierence itself as a kind of speech act or as an intervention in a situa-
tion whose eects are largely conictual. For in many social situations an
assertion of dierence is tantamount to an act of exclusion. This is the
scape-goating logic that Girard sees at the heart of sacrice, and it
means that for him dierence has inevitably to be seen in relation to the
violence that is associated with it.
18
The connection between dierence
Introduction q
and exclusion is also central both to feminism and to theories concerned
with racial dierence. Moreover, unlike the theories of dierence that I
have discussed so far, including those which one might call socially inter-
ventionist, both feminism and post-colonial theory speak from a position
of dierence.
The prime concern of feminist theories is to explore the social and
political consequences of various denitions of sexual dierence: biolog-
ical, social, essentialist or cultural. Denitions of sexual dierence prove
to be inseparable from the social and political circumstances in which
they are formulated. One of the chief merits of Simone de Beauvoirs
Deuxime sexe is the way she brings out the political stakes in the construc-
tion of sexual dierence by showing how woman is invariably presented
as the Other of man. Sexual dierence, she argues, is constituted so as
to make woman both dependent upon and relative to him:
Elle se dtermine et se direncie par rapport lhomme et non celui-ci par
rapport elle; elle est linessentiel en face de lessentiel. Il est le Sujet, il est
lAbsolu: elle est lAutre.
[She is dened and dierentiated with reference to man and not he with refer-
ence to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He
is the Subject, the Absolute: she is the Other.]
19
To dene sexual dierence by dening woman as other is to oppress
and exclude. Whether one responds to this by opting to arm
dierence, demanding recognition for what has hitherto been marginal-
ised in womens history, womens work and womens writing (as do
Gilbert and Gubar, and Showalter, for example), or whether one refuses
to accept the modes of thought within which sexual dierences are
conventionally constructed (as do Cixous and Irigaray), feminist think-
ing is constantly faced with the way in which dierence in the eld of
gender entails some form of exclusion.
It is this potential for dierence to be used as grounds for exclusion
that Sarraute is particularly sensitive to in her work, even though it is
never applied specically and concretely either to women or to racial
others. As a Jew both in Tsarist Russia and in Occupied France, as a
foreigner in France (by virtue of her Russian birth), and as a woman,
Sarrautes own experience would seem to have provided her with ample
grounds for understanding dierence in these terms. The biographical
information she provided for the Chronologie in the Pliade uvres com-
pltes makes issues of inclusion and exclusion a recurrent motif: her
father was given special dispensation to live in Ivanovo-Voznessensk,
:o Introduction
which as a Jew he would not normally have been entitled to; but as a con-
sequence of the socialist activities of his brother, Ilya Tcherniak was
obliged to leave Russia altogether in :qo; in :qo Nathalie Sarraute was
excluded from the bar because she was Jewish; in the following year her
husband was threatened with the same fate for having a Jewish wife; and
in :q. she had to go into hiding after being denounced to the local
police for being the daughter of a Jew. Sarraute always denies the rele-
vance of these experiences to her writing, just as she also resolutely
opposes any suggestion that she might be seen either as a woman writer
or as a feminist one. Both notions are anathema to her and she objects
strongly to the notion of an criture fminine (as we shall see in
Chapter ).
But if she rejects the overt content of her Russian, Jewish, female
identity, Sarraute nevertheless retains an acute sensitivity towards the
structures of dierence as exclusion that these multiple marginalities
encounter. So that, as far as theories of dierence are concerned, the
broad that is to say, broadly political assumptions of feminist theory
highlight the more general way that any invocation of dierence can
operate in the social sphere to the disadvantage of those to whom it is
applied. Much the same could be said of the ways in which racial
dierences are invoked to construct an image of the Orient or the racial
other to the advantage of the coloniser and to the detriment of the
colonised. As Robert Young writes, colonial discourse does not merely
represent the other so much as simultaneously project and disavow its
dierence.
20
The attempt to represent racial dierence has proved
inseparable from attempts to assert the mastery of the coloniser and
enforce control over the colonised races. The implied social agenda of
these discourses of dierence is palpable here, demonstrating that the-
ories of dierence do not necessarily just describe social realities, but can
intervene within those realities with real social eects. For this reason,
then, without seeking to retrieve Sarraute for a reading of her work in
terms of race or gender, an understanding of the ways in which theo-
rists of these issues are confronted with questions of dierence can be
helpful in underscoring this dimension of Sarrautes own engagement
with questions of dierence.
This brief survey of recent theories of dierence is intended in the
rst instance to illustrate the range of approaches, emphases and
applications that the term dierence has been associated with. My
purpose, however, is not to try and identify the best theory of dierence
by playing dierent theories o against each other, nor even to select the
Introduction ::
one most applicable to Sarraute. This book is not a defence of a partic-
ular theory of dierence whose worth might be proven by testing it out
against the work of a particular writer. Nor am I seeking to suggest that
Sarraute herself has an implicit theory of dierence which could be
brought to light by comparison with theories whose arguments are for-
mulated in explicitly conceptual terms. Indeed, while I am proposing
that questions of dierence are central to Sarrautes work, I would not
wish to suggest that dierence has a single meaning or thrust within her
work. If I have cast my net as widely as I have in the preceding pages, it
is because the dierent senses of the term dierence in the dierent
theories I have discussed all seem to have resonances in Sarrautes work
or to illuminate particular aspects of it.
In what follows, I shall be drawing on most of these ideas, but not
programmatically or systematically: dierent ideas about dierence are
not mutually exclusive and it would be both absurdly distorting and
unnecessarily limiting to scrutinise each one separately by applying it to
a single strand of Sarrautes writing. So, although I shall be dividing
Sarrautes work up under three broad headings of dierence (dierence
in human and social relations; physical and sexual dierence; generic
dierence), within each of these categories we shall encounter several
kinds of dierence as they surface and circulate in the discussion. The
headings are as much as anything a matter of convenience, and within
the ostensibly tri-partite structure of the book, there is also a spiral at
work in which ideas re-emerge and are explored in dierent contexts and
within dierent sets of associations. The rst chapter explores the way
in which, by virtue of the context of human relations in which it appears,
dierence comes to be conceived as dissent in her work. Chapters . and
make the reverse journey as they chart the means by which Sarrautes
characters seek to break down the barriers imposed by dierential
systems, despite the risks of assimilation and contamination involved.
The following two chapters examine the various strategies by which the
dierences entailed in physical and gendered existence are transcended
in Sarrautes writing as a condition of making writing itself possible.
And Chapters 6 and address the role that the dierences between the
genres of criticism and autobiography on the one hand, and ction on
the other, play in creating the appeal to commonality.
In the course of my discussion I shall be drawing on the whole body
of Sarrautes writing with no particular regard for either chronological
or generic dierences (except where these are the specic focus of my
concerns, as in the discussion of the critical and autobiographical writ-
:. Introduction
ings). This is because Sarrautes preoccupations remained remarkably
consistent over the years, as she herself acknowledged on a number of
occasions,
21
and the most rewarding approach, consequently, would
seem to entail treating her work as a set of variations on a number of
recurrent themes, rather than as a continuous chronological develop-
ment. (Chapter specically addresses the question of theme and vari-
ation in Sarrautes writing.) And yet in speaking of themes here, I would
want to avoid the suggestion that this book is a study of the theme of
dierence in Sarraute, for dierence is an issue which her writing con-
stantly worries at in a process of anxious and active thinking, rather than
something that it treats as a solid given. Dierence in Sarraute, then, is
neither a theme nor a theory. Instead it makes more sense to regard it as
a preoccupation which surfaces in all aspects of her writing, regardless
of their genre or status. For this reason I shall also be drawing on bio-
graphical information and extra-literary sources such as interviews
where this can illuminate or develop the discussion. Those readers in
search an account of a particular text should use my index to track it
down. (And I should perhaps admit in advance that I have little to say
here about Sarrautes theatre.)
However, my argument constantly comes back to the question of
writing itself, since the literary enterprise is central to Sarrautes project,
albeit in numerous and self-contradictory guises. For on the one hand,
writing is gured as the arena in which dierences can be erased and as
the means whereby the degrading sameness of assimilation can be
redeemed. And yet on the other hand, it repeatedly exposes the writer
to the danger of encounter with the other and requires recourse to a
variety of strategies to work against the consequent threat of mispercep-
tion or rejection at the readers hand. There is a ceaseless demand in
Sarrautes writing for a recognition of its own dierence, even as it con-
stantly holds out the possibility of an erasure of all dierence as some-
thing that separates and divides. And all the while it repeatedly returns
both writer and reader to the internal dierence that is the breach at the
heart of things. This breach is both the place where writing nds its nec-
essary impetus, and the painful experience which readers are invited to
share. The upshot (if there is anything as simple) of all of this would
seem to be that dierence and sameness never remain where they appear
to have been found. There are twists and turns at every stage of
Sarrautes work which, while continuing to keep them central, displace
and unsettle the very terms in which she presents it.
Introduction :
r\n+ :
Dierence and human relations
cn\r+rn oxr
Dierence and dissension
Il ny pas de moyen terme entre ladmission et lexclusion.
[There is no middle way between admittance and exclusion.]
(Entre la vie et la mort, p. :q [:6])
ni rrrnrxcrs \xn ni rrrnrxns
Reading Sarraute is often a deeply disorientating experience.
Characteristically, the opening page of a Sarraute novel pitches one into
a situation in which nothing is immediately explained, and where the un-
named and unidentied participants exacerbate the readers sense of
disorientation by expressing themselves in the form of questions:
Soudain il sinterrompt, il lve la main, lindex dress, il tend loreille . . . Vous
les entendez? . . . (VLE)
[Suddenly he pauses, raises his hand, his forenger in the air, he strains to catch
the sound . . . Do you hear them?]
Elle est mignonne, nest-ce pas? Regardez-moi a . . . regardez-comme cest n
. . . (DLI)
[Shes sweet, isnt she? Just look at that . . . see how ne it is . . .]
Vous ne vous aimez pas. Mais comment a? Comment est-ce possible? Vous
ne vous aimez pas? Qui naime pas qui? (TNTP)
[You dont love yourself. But what does that mean? How is that possible? You
dont love yourself ? Who doesnt love whom?]
Who is il? Whom or what can he hear? Does elle refer to a person
or an object? And, as the last question puts it, who does not love whom?
Furthermore, in each case we are not told to whom the question is
addressed and what their role in the situation is. Although the novels go
on gradually to clarify the situation so that anyone who has read Vous les
entendez? or disent les imbciles will be able to sketch in the details of the
:
core scene that is evoked in each case, Sarrautes works nevertheless
sustain their initial uncertainties by concentrating on the murkier aspects
of human consciousness and on the more elusive and unknowable
aspects of relations with others.
By Sarrautes own denition, the tropisms which are her subject
matter constitute the undenable and barely perceptible elements of the
human psyche: Ce sont des mouvements indnissables, qui glissent trs
rapidement aux limites de notre conscience, [They are indenable
movements which slip very rapidly on the borders of consciousness] she
writes in the preface to Lre du soupon.
1
And yet, although she strips
away most of the more familiar points of reference that readers might
expect to nd in a novel (there are no names, no physical description of
characters, no plot, no social and material setting for the action),
Sarraute does nevertheless provide elements of a Users Guide to her
writings. First of all, there are the critical essays which have accompa-
nied her work at regular intervals; and second, her novels contain a high
level of self-commentary to direct the reader along the unfamiliar paths
of her world. And these readers instructions are almost invariably
couched in terms of opposites, so that in speaking of the unfamiliar and
undenable tropisms in her preface to Lre du soupon, for example,
Sarraute proceeds to contrast them with the very denable feelings with
which we are much more familiar: ils [the tropisms] sont lorigine de
nos gestes, de nos paroles, des sentiments que nous manifestons, que
nous croyons prouver et quil est possible de dnir [They lie behind
our gestures, the words we speak, the feelings we manifest, which we
think we experience and which it is possible to dene.] This gives us an
apparently perfectly straightforward set of oppositions that contrast the
(unknown) tropism with (well-known) feeling, the undenable with the
denable, and the manifest with the almost imperceptible.
Indeed much of the interpretive apparatus that Sarraute provides her
readers with is couched in oppositions of this kind and would seem to
constitute a mode of writing that maps out the world in terms of starkly
delineated polarities. The lines of her critical arguments are remarkably
clear, and dierences are plainly and unambiguously formulated: the
inner life of the tropism is real, the external world of physical and social
realities mere appearance; psychology is the proper stu of ction and
not Balzacian or Hemingway-esque descriptions of physical exteriors;
formal innovation in writing is the only genuine realism, repetition of
realist convention is empty formalism, and so on. These oppositions run
very deep into the structure of the Sarrautean universe, and would
:8 Dierence and human relations
appear to oer a cast-iron guarantee both of its stability and of its intel-
ligibilty.
And yet critical writing on Nathalie Sarraute is marked by some
curious instances of what for the sake of argument I shall call mis-
reading, and this suggests that things are perhaps not quite as clear as
might at rst be assumed. These readers have not just missed a point or
gone slightly wide of the mark; but, despite Sarrautes agging of appar-
ently obvious dierence, they have quite dramatically got hold of the
wrong end of the stick. In a world where black is repeatedly dened in
terms of its oppostion to white, critics and often its the most loyal and
enthusiastic nevertheless mistake one for the other. To cite just a few
examples: Claude Mauriac, one of Sarrautes most vociferous and
devoted champions, reads Lre du soupon as an attack on psychology
(when, of course, it is just the opposite), from which he has to have her
subsequently and contradictorily retreat.
2
Mary McCarthy, who
had energetically promoted Sarraute for the Prix International de
Littrature which she won in :q6, ends her long, positive and otherwise
perceptive review of the highly self-reexive Entre la vie et la mort by claim-
ing that the writers double succumbs to the lure of social values, and
that everything between the two of them (writer and double) is upside
down.
3
This skews the conclusion of the novel and McCarthy is unable
to explain how the double comes back for his vital role at the end. Or
again, Stephen Heath (who is not alone in this reading) takes the word-
game played by the child in the train in Entre la vie et la mort as a positive
sign of his future destiny as a writer, an interpretation which is corrected
by Sarraute herself in her talk at the :q: colloquium on the nouveau
roman. Here she roundly asserts that the opposite is the case: cette atten-
tion, cette sensibilit aux mots, ce got pour ce genre de jeux, ne susent
nullement prdire quil sera un jour un crivain [this attention, this
sensitivity towards words, the liking for this kind of game do not in any
way suce to predict that he will one day be a writer.]
4
These correc-
tions of critical misreadings are a recurrent feature of Sarrautes own
critical activity (be this in the form of essays, lectures or interviews).
Their perplexed exasperation at the waywardness of critics implies that
there is a single correct reading of her work, that the truths of her
writing are self-evident to those who do not wilfully close their minds
against them, and that the dierences she articulates speak unequivo-
cally for themselves.
However, the elucidation provided by Sarrautes own critical com-
mentary never seems to succeed in settling matters denitively, and for
Dierence and dissension :q
this reason the infernally unstable round of her polemic continues.
One is led therefore to ask what lies behind this repeated marking of
dierence in Sarraute, and why it does not work. Why, in short, are
dierences so problematic? As a rst response one might note that
dierences for Sarraute are not what they are for that great architect
of dierence, Saussure. She has none of the equanimity he displays
when he asserts that language consists of dierences without positive
terms.
5
For him, dierence is an ordering principle that constructs
the linguistic and cultural world and makes it intelligible. For her,
dierence never seems to succeed in ordering the world it is called
upon to map out, because it is a matter that turns out to be inextrica-
bly entangled with issues of value and allegiance, which function
according to some mysterious principle other than that of intelligible
distinctions.
In Sarrautes work positive and negative signs are inexplicably
reversed when they change context. As the narrators alter ego comments
in Enfance:
Chez toi les signes sinversent. Cest ainsi quAdle, et aussi Vra, disent de toi
avec une certaine nuance de mpris . . . Oh, elle nest pas dicile, elle mange
nimporte quoi, ce qui laisse entendre que les continuels refus de nourriture et
les fantaisies capricieuses de Lili sont le signe de son temprament dlicat . . .
Comme dailleurs sa sant fragile est une qualit, chez toi la bonne sant est la
marque dune nature assez grossire, un peu fruste. (E, p. :6o)
[In you the signs are reversed. Thats why both Adle and Vra say of you, with
a certain note of contempt . . . Oh, she isnt dicult, shell eat anything, which
implies that Lilis continual rejection of food and her whims and caprices are
the sign of a sensitive temperament . . . As, moreover, her delicate health is a
quality, while your good health is the mark of a rather coarse, crude nature.
(::)]
All the signs here are caught up in another system, one based on alle-
giance rather than stable intelligibility. Because of Vras devotion to her
child, everything connected with Lili is automatically granted positive
value: diculty, which in principle carries a negative charge, becomes a
positive mark of sensitivity when it is associated with Lili; good health,
which in principle carries a positive charge, becomes a negative index of
a coarse nature if it is Natachas. It is as if there were some higher
instance which translated qualities and entities into tokens of something
else, a dierent order of things where the dierences are so radical that
the distinctions produced by the rst ordering principle (easy vs. picky,
sickly vs. robust) cease to carry weight and are made inoperative.
.o Dierence and human relations
A similar mechanism is at work in the contrast between the bergre and
the leather armchairs of Le Plantarium. Alain Guimier wants a bergre for
his at, whereas his mother-in-law thinks he and his young wife would
be better served by the armchairs that she oers to buy for them. The
two items stand at opposite poles in what turns out to be much more than
a simple binary opposition of social and cultural connotation. In fact,
dierence in Saussurean terms becomes instead dissension or discord,
where the dierences at issue are so radical and so extreme that they con-
stitue something much more like the dirend explored by Jean-Franois
Lyotard in his book of that name.
6
The bergre and the leather armchairs
cannot inhabit the same world. Their opposition does not structure a
universe or make it intelligible, so much as constitute a sign of the exis-
tence of two incommensurable universes. Discrimination on this issue
imposes choice, and choice inevitably becomes a test of allegiance. It is
Gisle, Alains wife, who is put to this test when she nds herself caught
in the middle, between two worlds: the world of the bergre that she shares
with Alain, and the world of the leather armchairs that she shares with
her mother. The signicance of the objects cannot survive translation
into the world of the other, because of the inexorable logic whereby
the existence of two opposing objects entails a choice between two
incompatible outlooks. In choosing one object over the other Gisle is
choosing a world, adopting a perspective, arming an allegiance; and
consequently rejecting a set of values, refusing a perspective, with-
drawing allegiance and negating a world.
This negation is made peculiarly vivid when, having opted for the
armchairs and her mothers perspective on things, Gisle suddenly sees
the world she shared with Alain stripped of all reality. It becomes like the
one in a play she once saw where the characters, who appear so full of
life as they enjoy themselves aboard a luxury liner, turn out to be dead
without their realising it:
elle stait vue, elle les avait vus tous deux, elle et lui, comme les autres les voyai-
ent, sa mre, les gens vivants . . . Ils taient morts. Ils sont morts tous les deux,
embarqus ils ne savent comment, entrans, emports sans connaissance vers
Dieu sait quelle rgion des morts . . . un rve, tout cela, les bergres Louis XV,
les vitrines des antiquaires, des visions qui passent dans la tte des gens vanouis,
des gens noys, gels . . . (P, pp. 6)
[she had seen herself, she had seen the two of them, as others, her mother, the
living, saw them . . . They were dead. They are both dead, embarked they dont
know how, swept along, carried away without their knowing it towards
God knows what country of the dead . . . a dream, all that, Louis XV bergres,
Dierence and dissension .:
antique-shop windows, visions that cross the minds of people in a swoon, of
people drowning, frozen . . . (pp. )]
She is suddenly caught up in a radical shift of perspective which removes
her entirely from the one she had originally espoused in Alain, a per-
spective which had, on the contrary, seemed to bring alive a world that
was previously half dead:
Ctait curieux, cette sensation quelle avait souvent que sans lui, autrefois, le
monde tait un peu inerte, gris, informe, indirent, quelle-mme ntait rien
quattente, suspens . . .
Aussitt quil tait l, tout se remettait en place. Les choses prenaient forme,
ptries par lui, retes dans son regard . . . (p. 6o)
[It was curious, this sensation she often had, that, without him, in the past, the
world had been a bit inert, grey, formless, indierent, that she herself had been
nothing but expectation, suspense . . .
As soon as he was there, eveything fell back into place. Things assumed form,
moulded by him, reected in his glance . . . (p. :)]
In entering Alains world she had had the impression of being able for
the rst time to see meaningful dierence, but it was at the cost of a
painful separation and a terrifying alienation from the one she had pre-
viously inhabited:
blottie contre lui, elle avait vu sa mre, jusque-l comme elle-mme incernable,
innie, projete brusquement distance, se ptrier tout coup en une forme
inconnue aux contours trs prcis. (p. q)
[huddled up to him, she had seen her mother, who, until then, like herself had
been uncircumscribable, innite, abruptly projected at a distance, suddenly
petried in an unfamiliar form with very precise contours. (p. 6q)]
As the perspective is abruptly switched from one world to the other,
Gisle discovers that the real principle of dierence is not that of binary
oppositions which map out a world, but the harsh rule of incommensur-
able alternatives where worlds are negated rather than mapped, and
where the consensus that sustains signifying systems of the Saussurean
variety is replaced by division and separation.
The logic that leads from dierences to the radical dissensions of the
dirend presupposes allegiances which in turn impose painful separa-
tions on those implicated in them, and the words arrachement [wrenching,
tearing away] and dchirement [heartbreak, lit. ripping] repeatedly mark
this event in the experience of Sarrautes characters. In entering Alains
world, Gisle is making a choice that tears her away from her mother
(ctait cette mme peur, cette mme sensation que maintenant, dar-
.. Dierence and human relations
rachement, de chute dans le vide, p. q, [it was this same fear, this same
sensation as now, of being wrenched away, of falling into the void (p. 6q)]
my emphasis). And in stepping back into her mothers world, Gisle dis-
covers that nothing ensures the impossiblity of separation: Il ny a fusion
complte avec personne (p. 6) [Complete fusion exists with no one (p.
)]). To adopt the rest of the worlds view of Alain is to be torn just as
devastatingly from him as she had previously been from her mother:
Larrachement, lareuse sparation va se consommer (p. 66, my emphasis)
[The wrench, the frightful separation will soon be complete (p. 8)]. The
dierence of the dirend turns out to be a terrifying separation; and for
Sarraute the word direr [to dier] has a perilous synonymy as well as
a sinister near-homophony with the word dchirer [to rip, tear].
Dierence in Sarrautes work, then, refers less to the reliable eects of
binary oppositions (the dierences without positive terms of Saussures
signifying systems), than it implies a painful diering (as when one agrees
or not to dier) from another. Or rather, to see a dierence in the
world (between black and white, for example) is inevitably also to dier,
to break a bond with another with all the terrifying consequences that
follow. A child tries her hand at critical discrimination, and says of a
piece of sculpture: a fait penser la sculpture crtoise [It reminds me
of Cretan sculpture]; but as a result she is brutally savaged by her father
(he bites her) in punishment for what he can only see as an assertion of
her underlying dierence (VLE, p. 8q [p. 6]). The childs remark cannot
be read as an innocent index of aesthetic taxonomy; it can only be taken
as mockery, as provocation, an attack on the world (the fathers) where
such terms have currency. So that the attempt to map the aesthetic world
in terms of meaningful dierences (Cretan vs. other forms of sculpture)
is turned into the site of a radical dirend, as demonstrated by the fero-
cious response from the father.
The most extended exploration of this mechanism can be found in
the episode involving the poupe de coieur in Enfance. In this episode the
child Natacha discovers dierence in a scene which denitively con-
structs dierence as part of a logic of betrayal and rejection, the dirend
and its consequent dchirement. The young Natacha is out with her
mother, sees a hairdressers doll in a shop window and is captivated by
it: tout en elle [la poupe] tait beau. La beaut, ctait cela. Ctait cela
tre belle (p. q:) [everything about her [the doll] was beautiful. Beauty
was that. That was what it was to be beautiful (p. 8:)]. But making
this judgement about the doll turns out to entail a dirend between
Natacha and her mother which is dened by the latter as betrayal: Un
Dierence and dissension .
enfant qui aime sa mre, she says, trouve que personne nest plus beau
quelle (p. q) [A child who loves its mother thinks that no one is more
beautiful than she (p. 8)]. For in wishing to apply the term belle to the
model, Natacha nds that she is misappropriating it from her mother
who regards herself as having exclusive rights to it:
Elle avait d mamener . . . sans jamais lexiger . . . elle mavait srement incite,
sans que je sache comment, la trouver trs belle, dune incomparable beaut
. . . (p. q.)
[She must have led me . . . without ever demanding it . . . she had certainly
incited me, without my knowing how, to consider her very beautiful, of
incomparable beauty . . . (p. 8:)]
For Maman the word cannot be made to serve two mistresses: either she
is beautiful, or the poupe de coieur is. To do as Natacha does and dis-
criminate between dierent kinds or degrees of beauty, is to reject and
betray:
il mapparat maintenant clairement que je ne mtais jamais demand si
maman tait belle. Et je ne sais toujours pas ce qui ma pousse ce jour-l
memparer de ce Elle est belle qui adhrait si parfaitement cette poupe de
coieur, qui semblait tre fait pour elle, et le transporter, essayer de le faire
tenir aussi sur la tte de maman. (p. q)
[I now see clearly that I had never asked myself whether Mama was beautiful.
And I still dont know what incited me, that day, to seize upon the words, Shes
beautiful which suited the hairdressers doll so perfectly, which seemed to have
been made for her, and to transport it, to try and x it on Mamas face. (p. 8)]
The result of this exercise is a simple and quite explicit comparison:
comment ne pas le voir? . . . cest vident, cest certain, cest ainsi: Elle
est plus belle que maman [how could I not see it? . . . its obvious, its
certain, it is so: She is more beautiful than Mama] (my emphasis).
Comparisons are a way of establishing dierences which are then duly
registered. Maman is assessed against the model (earlobes are con-
trasted, the relative curve of lips noted, eyelashes are measured), and she
is found wanting: less beautiful. As the narrators alter ego comments,
Natachas error was precisely to have compared her mother to others
and placed her within a single system of dierences:
ce qui avait d lagacer, cest que tu lavais tire do elle se tenait . . . au-dehors,
au-del, et que tu lavais pousse parmi les autres, o lon compare, situe,
assigne des places . . . elle ne se mesurait personne, elle ne voulait avoir sa place
nulle part. (p. q6)
. Dierence and human relations
[what must have irritated her was that you had removed her from where she was
. . . outside, beyond, and that you had pushed her among the others, where
people compare, situate, assign places . . . she didnt measure herself against
anyone, she didnt want to have a place anywhere. (p. 8)]
Natacha had forced her mother to enter the world of others, just as
Gisle had suddenly seen herself in the eyes of the world, observed by
others amongst others.
Mamans response to Natachas comment is explicitly not to incorpo-
rate it into the single world in which they both exist, not to say as
Natacha desperately hoped she would Mais oui, grosse bte, bien sr
quelle est plus belle que moi (p. q) [But of course, you big silly, of
course shes more beautiful than me (p. 8)], but to react as if a tie
between them had been broken and the world split in two. This she does
by treating dierence as a matter of treason, and then using this to dene
Natacha herself as dierent: Un enfant qui aime sa mre trouve que
personne nest plus beau quelle [A child who loves its mother thinks
that no one is more beautiful than she]. The mothers logic means that
Natachas perception of dierence is tantamount to a wholesale nega-
tion that amounts to betrayal. And this interpretation leads her to
respond like the father in Vous les entendez? with an equally wholesale
negation of Natacha as the agent of discriminations. Dened by the
mother as a child who does not love its mother, Natacha sees her own
dierence as tantamount to a separation, an exclusion from the world
she previously inhabited. Mamans verdict makes of her.
[un] enfant qui porte sur lui quelque chose qui le spare, qui le met au ban des
autres enfants . . . des enfants lgers, insouciants que je vois rire, crier, se pour-
suivre, se balancer au jardin, dans le square . . . et moi je suis lcart. (p. q8)
[[a] child who bears the stigma of something that cuts it o, that outlaws it from
other children . . . the light-hearted, carefree children I see laughing, shouting,
chasing one another, swinging in the garden, in the square . . . and I am on my
own. (p. 86)]
If Maman is not beautiful, then Natacha is not like other children, and
is banished from their happy world.
In a sense, Maman and Natacha have exchanged places, but in doing
so each reveals what threatens the original position of the other: Maman
wanted to be the only inhabitant of her world, a unique being in a uni-
verse of absolutes, a world of of what one might call positive terms
without dierences (outside, beyond); but by introducing dierence
Dierence and dissension .
Natacha wrenches her out of this beyond, and places her amongst
others and so lays her open to comparisons. As a result, Natacha is
equally brutally cast out from the world of others (of children) into a
total isolation where she is a monster whose being is so dierent from
that of others that it ceases even to be intelligible: moi je suis lcart.
Seule avec a, que personne ne connat, personne, si on le lui rvlait,
ne pourrait le croire (p. q8) [I am on my own. Alone with that some-
thing, which no one knows about and which no one, if told about it,
would be able to believe (p. 86)]. Suddenly, it is Natacha who is beyond
meaningful comparison, and Mamans unique position in a world of
absolutes is recast as a wholly negative one when it is experienced by
Natacha as a traumatic expulsion from the world of others. And the
comfort that Natacha derives from being a child like other children, is
revealed by the mothers experience to be the horror of potential
comparison. The Sarrautean moral that may be drawn from this
episode is that dierences rebound on those who make them. Or, as one
of her characters says in disent les imbciles, Cest vous que a juge (DLI,
pp. :: .) [Youre the one whos judged by it (p. :.8)]. The one who
perceives dierence becomes the one who is perceived as dierent: to
make distinctions is to exclude, the response to which is counter-exclu-
sion.
In this episode of Enfance dierences are the means whereby mother
and child are torn apart by what each takes to be a rejection by the other.
But from this point on, Natacha is also repeatedly described as being
torn apart inside: the arrachement that separates two beings becomes the
dchirement that tears apart a single being. So that the idea that Maman
might be mean with the amount of meat she gives the servants me
dchire (p. :o) [destroys me, lit. tears me apart, (p. qo)]; the half-for-
gotten farewells with Gacha, the maid who looks after Natacha in St
Petersburg, were probablement dchirants (p. :o) [probably heart-
rending (p. q.)]; the miserable Parc Montsouris makes Natacha fall prey
to une nostalgie par moments dchirante, and, she adds, le mot nest
pas trop fort (p. ::) [a nostalgia that was sometimes heartrending [. . .]
the word is not too strong (p. :oo)]; Vras cruel words, Ce nest pas ta
maison [It isnt your home], may charitably be interpreted in retro-
spect as a desire to spare Natacha un nouveau dchirement (p. ::) [a
new heartache (p. ::6)]; and when Maman returns to Russia early
because of the outbreak of war, the narrator writes, jtais dchire . . .
et ce qui me dchirait encore davantage, ctait sa joie quelle ne cher-
chait mme pas dissimuler (p. .6o) [I was heart-broken . . . and what
.6 Dierence and human relations
broke my heart even more was her joy, which she didnt even try to
conceal (p. .:)]. These scenes are either scenes of separation (from
Gacha, Maman), scenes of exclusion (Vras harsh words), or scenes of
comparison (the Parc Montsouris is implicitly compared with happier
places, Natacha notices the dierence between the helpings given to the
servants and the rest and is led to dene her mother as miserly and
mean). Comparison and separation are treated as equivalent experi-
ences insofar as they produce the same inward dchirement.
ni rrrnrxcr nrxi rn
Since dierences invariably turn out to be a form of dirend or of inward
dchirement, one can begin to see why Nathalie Sarraute might have so
much at stake in denying dierence. For, if her work is marked by appar-
ent polarities, it is also striking in its repeated denials of dierence, be
they personal, social, racial, sexual or linguistic. The inner life may be
opposed to the external world of social and physical existence, but it is
one where dierences of all kinds are thoroughly erased. The psycho-
logy of the tropism is one that presupposes that dierences, even if they
exist, do not count. Or, as Alain Guimier puts it:
je ne parviens pas croire une dirence fondamentale entre les gens . . . Je
crois toujours cest peut-tre idiot que quelque part, plus loin, tout le monde
est pareil, tout le monde se ressemble . . . Alors je nose pas juger . . . Je me sens
aussitt comme eux, ds que jte ma carapace, le petit vernis . . . (P, p. .q)
[I cant bring myself to believe in a fundamental dierence between people . . .
I always believe perhaps its stupid that somewhere, at a further remove,
everyone is the same, everyone is alike . . . So I dont dare judge . . . Right away
I feel that Im like them, as soon as I remove my carapace, the thin varnish . . .
(p. )]
The truth of Sarrautes psychology is one that transcends dierences of
age, gender, class, creed, race and nationality. In interviews one nds
Nathalie Sarraute reporting with evident satisfaction that readers in
Russia have claimed to recognise the inner world she depicts, a working-
class reader sees his shop-keeper aunt in the haute bourgeoise Tante Berthe,
men acknowledge as a world they know one that happens to be por-
trayed by a woman.
7
Nathalie Sarraute regularly evokes with euphoria worlds where racial
and sexual dierences apparently count for nothing. She recalls school as
a place where visiblement les ides de dirence de race ou de religion
Dierence and dissension .
nentraient dans lesprit de personne (E, p. .6) [it was obvious that any
ideas about dierences of race or religion never entered anyones head
(p. .oq)]. And it is school, the haven that abolishes dierence, which
determines Natachas decision to remain with her father in Paris when
her mother suggests that she return to St Petersburg. Natacha chooses a
world without dierences (school), against one (her mothers) which she
evokes here exclusively in terms of violent separation and estrangement:
le choc produit par cette brusque rapparition de ce quoi javais t
arrache [. . .] et sous ce brutal rapprochement la dcouverte dun nouvel
loignement (p. :.) [the shock caused by this abrupt reappearance of
what I had been wrenched [lit. torn] away from [. . .] then under this
brutal rapprochement, the discovery of a new distancing (p. :)] (my
emphases).
In another vision of an ideal community observed during a stay in a
kibbutz in :q6q, Sarraute not only extolls the equal welcome extended by
the kibbutz to a Dutch couple, an old Czech woman and a beautiful
English girl in wellington boots, but also claims that no distinction was
made between Jew and non-Jew, or even and this is an extraordinary
assertion to make just two years after the Yom Kippur war between
Jew and Arab:
Je nai, quant moi, jamais remarqu de distinction entre Juifs et non-Juifs. Jai
rencontr Merhavia un tudiant de Nanterre, heureux de travailler chaque
t comme plongeur au kibboutz. Personne ne savait sil tait Juif ou non. Il sest
rvl par hasard quil ne ltait pas.[. . .]
A Regavim, dans une classe de petits, o je suis entre par hasard, jai vu les
murs couverts de dessins sur le thme de lamiti avec les enfants arabes.
Jai vu entrer dans mon atelier un jeune pre avec ses deux petits garons,
accueillis en amis. Jai appris plus tard quils taient arabes. Dautres Arabes
sont venus dans la salle manger discuter dun match de football auquel ils
devaient participer.
[For myself, I never noticed any distinction between Jews and non-Jews. At
Merhavia I met a student from Nanterre who was happy to work as a washer-
up in the kibbutz every summer. It was discovered by chance that he wasnt
Jewish. [. . .]
At Regavim, in a classroom of small children which I happened to go into, I
saw the walls covered with drawings on the subject of friendship with Arab chil-
dren.
I saw a young father with his two little boys come into my workshop where
they were welcomed as friends. I learned later that they were Arabs. Other
Arabs came to the dining hall to talk about a football match that they were sup-
posed to be playing in.]
.8 Dierence and human relations
A Palestinian bomb attack that takes place during her visit and thus
threatens to explode this image of harmony, is treated as a regrettable,
but brief interruption, in a process of underlying unanimity between
Jews and Arabs aimed at creating a single community in which all
dierence will ultimately be eliminated.
8
In Sarrautes ideal communities sexual dierence is not an issue, and
men and women are treated the same. In the kibbutz domestic labour is
reduced to a minimum, and what little such work there is, is equally
shared between the sexes. Similarly, when she describes the Russian
migr community of her childhood in Paris, she retrospectively discov-
ers a world without sexual dierences: aussi bien au point de vue moral
quau point de vue intellectuel, personne ne faisait entre les hommes et
les femmes la moindre dirence (E, p. .oo) [no one made the slightest
distinction between men and women, either from the intellectual or the
moral point of view (p. :8)]. However, this claim sits uneasily in a scene
whose recall makes much of Vras highly gendered role in the gather-
ings that brought this supposedly ideal community together: seated
behind the copper samovar in the place that belongs to the mistress of
the house, pouring tea for her guests, silently attending to their needs
and participating neither morally nor intellectually in the discussions
taking place around her.
One of the more curious areas where Sarrautes denial of dierence
appears is in that of language. She spoke English and German as well
as Russian and French, but the crucial languages were for obvious bio-
graphical reasons the latter two. When asked about her linguistic
origins and the role of the two languages in her life, she would insist on
her French-speaking origins as she had been quite unaected by the
Russian that she must nevertheless have heard spoken around her.
9
In
interviews she is also at pains to emphasise that her parents had equal
command of both languages, and thus were never victims of linguistic
dierence, a position which would have excluded them from full
participation in the French linguistic and social community. Like
Babouchka in Enfance (who is also credited with impeccable French), they
betray their Russian origins in French only in the rolled Russian r which
they cannot unlearn (just as Natacha cannot learn it). The dierence
between the Russian and the French languages and indeed between
the Russian Orthodox and French Catholic religions is regarded by
Sarraute as a kind of game, where getting things wrong (like saying
serrer instead of ranger, or crossing yourself the wrong way in church)
is merely charming idiosyncrasy, or at worst a minor gae: as when
Dierence and dissension .q
Babouchka forgets that being in France she should speak in Russian and
not in French if she doesnt want the servants to understand. Or when,
having contrasted the specic practices of the Orthodox church that
Natacha visits with Babouchka with those of the Catholic church to
which she sometimes accompanies the maid, Sarraute erroneously
recalls the chants grgoriens in the Orthodox church, an error which
she corrects in subsequent editions as if it were a mere slip of the pen.
10
And yet there are occasional but telling signs that the dierences
between the two languages do count, and count for a great deal. For
instance, the eect of Vras words Tiebia podbrossili is exclusively
attributed to their Russian connotations: en franais elle aurait d dire
on ta abandonne, ce qui ntait quun mou, exsangue quivalent des
mots russes, whereas ce mot russe voque un rejet brutal en mme
temps que sournois (pp. :8.) [in French she would have had to say
on ta abandonne [theyve abandoned you], which would be a very
feeble, anaemic equivalent of the Russian words [. . .], the Russian word
conjures up a brutal and at the same time underhand rejection (pp.
:6:.)]. And when her mother comes to see her in Paris, Natacha nds
it strange to ask for her at the hotel by the French version of her Russian
name, Madame Boretzki, words which have a strange, unreal sound, as
if the person they refer to doesnt quite exist in French. And when
mother and daughter nally meet in the hotel bedroom, Natacha is
shocked by Mamans bare shoulders until she remembers that ce sont
des choses qui l-bas, en Russie, ne choquent pas comme ici (p. ..)
[these are things which dont shock people in Russia as they do here (p.
..)]. This reminder of cultural dierence seems to leave the two with
no common ground, and nothing to say to each other: je ne sais pas quoi
dire et je vois que maman ne sait pas trs bien quoi dire non plus [I
dont know what to say and I can see that Mama doesnt really know
what to say either]. These moments when linguistic and national
dierences surface in the narrative of Enfance would suggest that there
are, after all, real dierences that are being denied in Sarrautes asser-
tion that there is easy and eortless trac between the two.
Indeed, the child seems to know it better than the adult writer, for the
scene of separation between mother and daughter which takes place in
the train as it crosses Russia and heads for Berlin, includes the childs
physiological exploration of the contrasting French and Russian versions
of the word for sun, and a desperate attempt on her part to make them
interchangeable equivalents:
o Dierence and human relations
je mamuse scander sur le bruit des roues toujours les mmes deux mots . . .
venus sans doute des plaines ensoleilles que je voyais par la fentre . . . le mot
franais soleil et le mme mot russe solntze o le l se prononce peine, tantt je
dis sol-ntze, en ramassant et en avanant les lvres, le bout de ma langue
incurve sappuyant contre les dents de devant, tantt so-leil en tirant les
lvres, la langue eeurant peine les dents. Et de nouveau sol-ntze. Et de
nouveau so-leil. Un jeu abrutissant que je ne peux pas arrter. Il sarrte tout
seul et les larmes coulent. (pp. :o8)
[I amuse myself by chanting [lit. scan] the same two words in time with the
sound of the wheels . . . always the same two words which came, no doubt, from
the sunlit plains I could see out of the window . . . the French word soleil and
the same word in Russian, solntze, in which the l is hardly pronounced, some-
times I say sol-ntze, gathering my lips and pushing them out, the tip of my
curled-up tongue pressing against my front teeth, and sometimes so-leil, stretch-
ing my lips, my tongue barely touching my teeth. And then again, sol-ntze. And
then again, so-leil. A mind-numbing game which I cant stop. It stops of its own
accord and the tears ow. (pp. q)]
Soleil and solntze are described as the same word, and the regular sound
of the wheels of the train subjects them to the same scansion. But the
shape of the tongue and the lips required by the pronunciation of the
French and the Russian is very dierent in each case: lips pursed and
pushed forward, tongue curved and pressed against the teeth for solntze;
and a reverse movement for soleil, with lips stretched and the tongue
barely touching the teeth. Language dierence is once again described
as a game, but one that the child knows is merely numbing the mind in
order to palliate a dierence which will take the form of a denitive
separation between Russia and France, mother and daughter. It is no
surprise, then, that the game gives way to tears.
Later on in Enfance the childs game is repeated in a dierent way by
the mother as she sits lost in wonder at the equal beauty of the Russian
and French words for wrath:
elle se tourne vers moi et elle me dit: Cest trange, il y a des mots qui sont aussi
beaux dans les deux langues . . . coute comme il est beau en russe, le mot
gniev, et comme en franais courroux est beau . . . cest dicile de dire
lequel a plus de force, plus de noblesse . . . elle rpte avec une sorte de bonheur
Gniev . . . Courroux . . . elle coute, elle hoche la tte . . . Dieu que cest
beau . . . et je rponds Oui. (p. .8)
[she turns to me and she says: Its strange, there are words which are equally
beautiful in both languages . . . listen how beautiful the word gniev is in
Russian, and how beautiful the French word for wrath, courroux, is . . . its
Dierence and dissension :
dicult to say which one has more force, more nobility . . . she repeats with a
sort of happiness: Gniev . . . Courroux . . . she listens, she nods . . . God how
beautiful . . . And I reply: Yes. (p. ..8)]
Mamans aestheticising of the issue of language dierence anticipates
the solution to which Nathalie Sarraute herself will ultimately have
recourse in order to deal with more general questions of dierence: art.
It is not so much that the words themselves, gniev and courroux, are equally
beautiful, but rather that their beauty derives from their sameness. Or
more precisely still, beauty consists of seeing things as the same, of not
seeing the dierences between them and in this instance, perhaps also
of overriding the threat contained in the signied (anger) of the two
words. Already in the train episode, the regular rattle of the wheels pro-
vided an aesthetic form (scansion) for making Russian and French
words the same; and in its small way the childs literary act pregures the
character of Sarrautes adult practice as a writer.
For writing in Sarraute is always implicitly presented as a sphere in
which dierences will melt away. The modern novel is a place where
character need no longer be divided from character, since [on] a vu
tomber les cloisons tanches qui sparaient les personnages les uns des
autres [[we] have seen the water-tight partitions that used to separate
characters from each other, collapse] in order to reveal la trame
commune que chacun contient tout entire (Lre, p. 68) [the
common woof that each of us contains in its entirety (p. 88)]. Moreover,
the techniques of the modern novel are designed precisely to draw the
reader into the world of the novel, and to abolish the distance that separ-
ates reader from author; or, as Sarraute puts it, lattirer cote que cote
sur le terrain de lauteur (p. qo) [entice him at all costs onto the authors
territory (p. q)]. Finally, writing itself is an activity which transports the
writer into a world without sexual (or any other) dierence:
Je travaille partir uniquement de ce que je ressens moi-mme. Je ne me place
pas lextrieur, je ne cherche pas analyser du dehors. lintrieur, o je suis,
le sexe nexiste pas. [. . .] Je suis, un tel point, dans ce que je fais que je nex-
iste pas. Je ne pense pas que cest une femme qui crit. Cette chose-l, ce que je
travaille, est en train de se passer quelque part o le sexe fminin ou masculin
nintervient pas.
11
[I work exclusively on the basis of what I feel myself. I dont position myself on
the outside, I dont try to analyse from without. Inside, where I am, sex doesnt
exist. [. . .] I am inside what I am doing to such a point that I dont exist. I dont
think that this is a woman writing. The thing that I am working on is happen-
ing in a place where the female sex or the male sex dont apply.]
. Dierence and human relations
Through writing, both for the writer who creates and in its psycholog-
ical content, it becomes possible for Nathalie Sarraute to assert, along
with Alain Guimier: Je pense qu lintrieur de chacun de nous, trs
profondment, nous sommes pareils (P, p. 8:) [I think that inside each
of us, at a very deep level, we are the same].
At the level of words, too, writing seems to oer Sarraute the possi-
bility of sameness, the suppression of dierence. Sarrautes style
exemplies to an extraordinary degree the principle which Roman
Jakobson famously denes as the poetic function of language, namely:
[the projection of] the princple of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis
of combination.
12
Her writing is far less a combination of dierences than
it is a projection of equivalences. The metaphors and imagery which
characterise her ction in particular are the vehicle for a thorough-going
elaboration of equivalence: rst between the unnamed psychological
experience being evoked and the various images oered as substitutes to
elucidate it. And second, between the images themselves, which rarely
appear in isolation, but almost always in pairs or clusters. So that the
concrete metaphor becomes the equivalent of the psychological experi-
ence; and the metaphors themselves are treated as interchangeable sub-
stitutes or equivalents of each other.
To take an example from Tropismes, the pense humble et crasseuse
which the anonymous central character senses in the mistress of the
house, is described as follows:
Et il sentait ltrer de la cuisine la pense humble et crasseuse, pitinante, piti-
nant toujours sur place, toujours sur place, tournant en rond, en rond, comme
sils avaient le vertige mais ne pouvaient pas sarrter, comme sils avaient mal
au coeur mais ne pouvaient pas sarrter, comme on se ronge les ongles, comme
on arrache par morceaux sa peau quand on ple, comme on se gratte quand on
a de lurticaire, comme on se retourne dans son lit pendant linsomnie, pour se
faire plaisir et pour se faire sourir, spuiser, en avoir la respiration coupe
. . . (T, pp. :6:)
[And he sensed percolating from the kitchen, humble, squalid, time-marking
thoughts, marking time on one spot, always on one spot, going round and round
in circles, as if they were dizzy but couldnt stop, as if they felt sick but couldnt
stop, the way we bite our nails, the way we tear o dead skin in strips when were
peeling, the way we scratch ourselves when we have hives, the way we toss in
our beds when we cant sleep, to give ourselves pleasure and to make ourselves
suer, until we are exhausted, until it leaves us out of breath . . . (pp. :6:)]
The thought is evoked in terms of likenesses, and more particularly
through a series of similes, each taken to be an equivalent of the others;
Dierence and dissension
so that vertigo, nausea, nail-biting, peeling, scratching, tossing with
sleeplessness are all proposed as versions of the same experience.
Phonetically, semantically and syntactically, the words themselves also
project equivalences. Adjectives rarely appear in isolation in Sarrautes
writing, and the presence of a second or third does not so much modify,
as consolidate the meaning of the rst; so that here crasseuse
[squalid], by specifying humble makes itself a quasi-synonym of it:
humble is to be understood as a version of crasseuse, and crasseuse
as a version of humble. The adjectival pitinante [time-marking]
generates the verbal pitinant sur place [marking time on one spot],
which, after a literal repetition (toujours sur place [always in one
spot]), in turn generates the synonymous expression tournant en rond
[going round and round], with its repeated en rond. These words then
call up by association the rst of the similes (comme sils avaient le
vertige [as if they felt dizzy]), the second of which is in any case a rede-
scribing of the symptoms of the rst (vertigo gives you nausea), and also
repeats the phrase mais ne pouvaient pas sarrter [but couldnt stop].
Comme [the way] is used as an anaphora, providing a sort of scan-
sion (like the wheels of the train) that reduces the dierent experiences
of nail-biting, peeling, scratching, etc. to the same, lingering only on the
last experience to explore how pleasure and suering might be inter-
changeable, and to suggest that suering, exhaustion and breathlessness
are all instances of the same thing. Nathalie Sarrautes sentences all tend
toward this pattern of repetition phonetic, semantic and syntactic
which has the eect of drawing the world and all its manifestations of
dierence into a vortex or a haven of equivalences.
nrvoxn coxr\nr
Yet despite these evocations of social, psychic and literary utopias where
all dierences are erased, there is no way that Sarrautes writing can exist
as anything other than a radical assertion of dierence. Nathalie
Sarraute constitutes herself as a writing subject by setting herself up in
opposition to various literary institutions and phenomena: as the
Elephants Child who blows the whistle on the literary establishment
through her questioning of the literary worth of Paul Valry; as the pro-
tge of Sartre who nevertheless challenges the ctional aesthetic cham-
pioned by Les Temps modernes; as the defender of innovation against the
tyranny of the critical rule of Realism; but also as the renegade from the
formalist orthodoxy of the nouveau roman in the :q6os.
13
And if it is some-
Dierence and human relations
times useful to her to justify her own practices by citing the example of
others, she is always quick to dene her own dierence when she does
so. For example, Virginia Woolf is credited by Sarraute with having
contributed to la transformation de la matire romanesque dans le
roman moderne, ce dplacement du centre de gravit du roman qui
est pass du personnage et de lintrigue la substance romanesque elle-
mme [the transformation of the subject matter of ction in the
modern novel, and to the shifting of the centre of gravity in the novel
from character and plot to the very substance of the novel], and thus
with having initiated a form of writing which Sarraute has continued to
develop and explore in her own work. But lest the two writers become
too closely associated in the minds of readers, Sarraute makes it clear
that they are not only dierent, but according to her, total opposites:
On a parl de nos ressemblances, de linuence de Virginia Woolf sur ce que
jai crit. Je crois que nos sensibilits sont vraiment loppos lune de lautre.
Chez Virginia Woolf, lunivers entier, brass par le temps, coule travers la con-
science des personnages, qui sont passifs, comme ports de ct et dautre par
le courant ininterrompu des instants.
Chez moi, les personnages sont toujours dans un tat dhyperactivit.[. . .]
Do un rythme tout dirent du style.
14
[People have talked about our similarities, of the inuence of Virginia Woolf
on what I have written. I think our sensibilities are really totally unlike each
other. In Virginia Woolf, the entire universe, swept along by time, ows through
the consciousnesses of the characters, who are passive, and as if carried hither
and thither by the ceaseless current of moments.
In my work, the characters are always in a state of hyperactivity. [. . .] And
that produces a completely dierent stylistic rhythm.]
Sarraute is drawing here upon all her critical acumen to establish a
dierence that will forestall any possible reduction of the two writers to
the same.
Similarly, for the emergent writer in Entre la vie et la mort, one of the
rst and worst experiences he has to confront is the way his new-
found status as a writer is used as a basis for assimilating him into a group
of other writers who welcome him as one of their own, dismissing any
dierence he may suppose he has:
Vous voil donc ici, parmi nous. Vous verrez, on ny est pas si mal. On se sent
soutenus. Appuys les uns aux autres. On sest cru, nest-ce pas, si seul, tout
dirent . . . Et on est surpris, on est rconfort de dcouvrir entre nos tats les
plus subtils, jusquentre nos manies les plus tranges une telle ressemblance.
(EVM, p. 8:)
Dierence and dissension
[So here you are, one of us. Youll see, its not so bad here. You feel supported.
Leaning on each other. You thought you were so alone, completely dierent,
didnt you . . . And youre surprised, youre cheered to discover such a likeness
between our subtlest states of mind, even between our strangest quirks. (p. 8o)]
But the writer nds no comfort in this discovery of sameness. Far from
representing an ideal community like the kibbutz or the circle of
Natachas fathers migr friends, this group constitutes a real threat to
the writers creativity which requires complete isolation, and demands
to be nothing less than an assertion of pure dierence:
Pas de nous. Le nous est dgradant. Nous pour tout le reste, mais pas pour cela.
Il ny a pas de nous possible ici. Il est seul, comme au moment de sa naissance,
comme au moment de sa mort, quand barricad chez lui, tout son tre ramass
sur lui-mme, tendu vers cela, il se penche vers cette peine perceptible craque-
lure . . . (p. 8)
[No we. We is demeaning. We for all the rest, but not for that. There is no
we possible here. He is alone, as at the moment of his birth, as at the moment
of his death, when, shut away in his room, his entire being turned in on himself,
straining toward it, he leans towards that barely perceptible ssure . . . (p. 8o)]
The work of the writer insists upon existing in a world beyond, like the
one that Maman laid claim to for herself in the episode with the poupe
de coieur, au-del. Loin de toute comparaison possible [beyond. Far
removed from all possible comparison], a world in which, as for
Maman, Aucune critique, aucune louange ne sembl[e] pouvoir se poser
sur elle (E, p. q) [It seemed as if no criticism, no praise could alight on
her (p. 8.)]. The dierence asserted by writing would ideally be so
extreme, so absolute as to preclude all possibility of comparison, let
alone assimilation.
This ideal form of writing would take the form of the epiphanic
moment of happiness experienced by Natacha in the Jardin du
Luxembourg. She is with her father and the woman she will come to
know as Vra, her step-mother, but whom for the time being, she knows
only as the woman who dressed up in a mans suit (thus negating sexual
dierence) and danced with her one Christmas in a at in the rue
Boissonade. A bound copy of Hans Christian Andersens Tales lies closed
on the lap of one of the adults, its sad stories of rejection, abandonment
and exclusion temporally forgotten: the ugly ducklings, the little match-
girls shut out in the snow, the tin soldiers lost down drains, and the mer-
maids who cannot follow their lovers into the world of humans. And
then the experience whose name might be happiness, but which is
6 Dierence and human relations
qualied in a typically Sarrautean way by a list of near synonyms (flici-
t, exaltation, extase, joie [felicity, exaltation, ecstasy, joy]) takes hold;
and the child becomes one with the world around her, lls the walls, the
owers, the trees, the grass and the shimmering air with her being. This
is self-assertion as euphoria: violent (a sensation of such violence), but
without any menace to threaten or contest the armation of pure being:
[la] vie ltat pur, aucune menace sur elle, aucun mlange (p. 66)
[life in its pure state, no lurking menace, no mixture (pp. 6)]. The
world is now an expansion chamber for the childs being which encoun-
ters nothing other than objects which it can absorb into itself, without
having to acknowledge dierences that would result in a mix. It is this
state towards which Nathalie Sarrautes writing aspires, a pure
armation of self in which the surrounding world acquiesces and to
which readers in their turn are called upon to assent.
In his review of Entre la vie et la mort Jean Blot oers a very astute
account of this mechanism. He sees clearly how the intersubjective
dynamic which Sarraute creates (more of which in the next chapter) is
also the origin of her writing: le lieu o se situe le discours de Nathalie
Sarraute est celui o ltre se veut unique, an de revendiquer un amour
sans partage. [. . .] Mais le lieu de cet apptit dvorant, partir duquel
se lve le murmure de Sarraute, lieu o lexistence est dcouverte comme
voue la qute de lamour passif, est aussi celui o la littrature prend
racine ou celui partir duquel elle prend son essor [the place where
Nathalie Sarrautes language is situated is the one where a person likes
to think he is unique, in order to demand an undivided love. [. . .] But
the place of this voracious appetite, from where Sarrautes murmur
emerges, a place where existence is found to be devoted to the search for
a passive love, is also the place where literature takes root or from where
it springs].
15
The loving response from a world which has no other alle-
giances (an undivided love), is precisely the demand made by Maman
and of which Natacha fell so catastrophically foul. And yet it is also the
one implicitly made of its readers by the work of the adult writer.
Indeed the demand is necessarily a highly problematic one. The self-
assertion which embodies it rarely takes the straightforward euphoric
form of the episode in the Jardin du Luxembourg. On the contrary, it is
usually associated with an acute awareness of the possibility that self-
armation will encounter resistance or even outright negation. Blot
is also alert to the ambivalence or hesitation which this awareness
introduces into a movement which is nevertheless constructed as
pure armation: Lamour sans partage exige que deux conditions
Dierence and dissension
contradictoires se trouvent miraculeusement runies: la prsence et
lindistinction. Lcrivain va aimer la parole qui le manifeste et redouter
la phrase qui recle une armation par laquelle il se distingue ou sen-
tend distinguer (p. ::6) [An unidivided love requires that two contra-
dictory conditions be miraculously united: presence and indistinction.
The writer will be drawn to words which reveal him, and will fear any
expression which contains an assertion through which he stands out or
in which he hears himself singled out]. The desire that constitutes
writing seeks both to occupy the world with its absolute and exclusive
presence; but it also seeks to be accepted (loved) for what makes it
dierent. In short, dierences in Sarraute always imply and implicate an
other whose existence largely accounts for the profoundly unstable char-
acter of their operation.
Sarrautes writing is caught in this repetitive cycle of denial and asser-
tion of dierence. Dierence in her work is inextricably associated with
two contradictory demands. If dierences need to be denied it is because
they are lived as exclusions and separations that are too painful to bear.
But the denial of dierence leads to an equally painful form of mis-
recognition which can be escaped only through an armation of
absolute dierence. This dilemma is the drama which is perpetually
reenacted by Sarrautes characters. Indeed, nothing escapes its logic; for
it is not just the characters, but the writing itself which is constituted
around the twin poles of this paradox.
8 Dierence and human relations
cn\r+rn +vo
Subjectivity and indistinction
srrr \xn o+nrn
If the issue of dierence in Sarrautes universe takes the contradictory
forms described in the previous chapter, this is because her work is con-
cerned far less with the intelligibility of that universe than with the
nature of the experience that is lived in it. And since experience pre-
supposes a subject, the result is that, as we have already begun to see,
issues of sameness and dierence in Sarrautes work are not based pri-
marily on discrimination or judgement, but acquire a heavy existential
charge. Dierence is experienced subjectively either as a painful exclu-
sion, or as an impulse towards a pure armation of self. Similarly, same-
ness is a condition which is either longed for by a subject at the mercy of
what Sarraute calls the terrible desire to establish contact;
1
or one that
his whole being resists and revolts against. In seeking to understand how
dierence functions in Sarraute, one repeatedly discovers that it oper-
ates far more as an experiential issue for the subject than as a necessary
condition for the intelligibility of the world which the subject inhabits.
The world of Sarrautes writing is decidedly not one that invites a
deciphering that would reveal, as Balzac has it in his Avant-propos to
the Comdie humaine, the reasons or reason for the phenomena the work
presents. However intense the scrutiny that Sarrautes characters bring
to bear on each other and on the occasional objects that they encounter
in their path, its aim is never the recovery of some underlying explana-
tory model, or a set of classications and categories that would trans-
late experiential phenomena into meaningful distinctions. The gaze
projected onto Sarrautes world by its inhabitants takes the form of a
nervous vigilance rather than analytical insight. Theirs is a watchful eye
that tracks the movements of its objects in order to establish where they
are as the means of discovering who they are, that is to say, whether they
exist as friend or as foe, as threat or as reassurance. For the Sarrautean
q
subject is never alone. The experience of the subject is always an expe-
rience if often a phantasmatic one of other subjects. In other
words, subjectivity here necessarily entails intersubjectivity,
2
and, as the
conclusion of the last chapter suggested, the issue of sameness and
dierence is inextricably bound up with the subjects relation to the
other. In this chapter I shall be addressing the question of dierence
primarily from the perspective of the subject and his relations with
others.
3
But before going on to do so, it will be necessary to pause for a
moment and consider the nature of the terms I shall be using. The word
subject as distinct from character has the advantage of its associations
of inwardness, anonymity and passivity which all seem apposite to the
nature of experience as it is portrayed in Sarrautes work. Moreover, her
critique of conventional ctional character in her essay Lre du
soupon is based on a conception of selfhood which would seem to
require a term other than that of character. In modern literature, she
says, un tre sans contours, indnissable, insaisissable et invisible, un
je anonyme qui est tout et qui nest rien et qui nest le plus souvent
quun reet de lauteur lui-mme, a usurp le rle du hros principal et
occupe la place dhonneur (Lre, p. 6:) [a being devoid of outline,
indenable, intangible and invisible, an anonymous I who is every-
thing and who is nothing, and who as often as not is just a reection of
the author himself, has usurped the role of the main hero and occupies
the place of honour (p. 8)]. I shall therefore refer to this formless being
as the subject, and to the content of his selfhood as subjectivity. The
basic premiss of Sarrautes work is that this subjectivity is a universal,
and that characters are no more than une limitation arbitraire, un
dcoupage conventionnel pratiqu sur la trame commune que chacun
contient tout entire et qui capte dans ses mailles innombrables tout
lunivers (pp. 68) [an arbitrary limitation, a conventional gure cut
from the common woof that each of us contains in its entirety, and
which captures and holds the whole universe in its innumerable meshes
(p. 88)]. Yet while the condition of subjectivity is universal, the nature of
experience as it is actually lived condemns all subjects to encounter
others as characters rather than as equals in subjectivity. Or, as Sarraute
puts it in the prire dinsrer to disent les imbciles:
chacun de nous est lui seul lunivers entier, [. . .] il se sent inni, sans contours.
En mme temps il voit tous les autres comme des personnages, [. . .] et il sait
que lui-mme en est un pour eux.
o Dierence and human relations
[each of us feels that they constitute an entire universe, [. . .] each of us feels
innite, without denitive outline. At the same time each of us sees all others as
characters, [. . .] and knows that he is one for them.]
The novel, for Sarraute, is the means whereby the limitations of this ter-
rible irony can be overcome, since it is able to present the experience of
all its characters in terms of their own discrete apprehension of sub-
jectivity, to treat them all as versions of the I whom she instates in the
place of the one-time hero of the novel. Not that there is anything com-
placent about the novels representation of this universal experience of
subjectivity, for Sarrautes work reenacts all the longing and the fear that
real subjects often experience in relation to this issue. Subjects are pre-
sented as desperate for conrmation that their own subjectivity is shared
by others; and yet at the same time they are shown to be deeply anxious
about the consequences that any such conrmation might bring. It is this
ambivalent desire that keeps the subject perpetually turned outward
towards others.
The question of whether the other is friend or foe is, as we have seen,
tantamount to asking, Is s/he the same or dierent? Although the
underlying presupposition of all Sarrautes writing is that at bottom
everyone is the same or as she said in an interview with Lucette Finas,
nous nous ressemblons tous comme deux gouttes deau [we are all as
alike as two peas in a pod]
4
this claim nevertheless remains no more
than a hypothesis which is put to the test in every encounter. In her early
novels Sarrautes central characters are repeatedly confronted with the
possibility that this belief about the underlying sameness of all individ-
uals is just a mark of their own aberrant dierence. The specialist in
Portrait dun inconnu diagnoses the narrator as having [un] got de lin-
troversion, [et] de la rverie dans le vide, qui nest pas autre chose quune
fuite devant leort (PI, p. ) [[a] tendency towards introspection and
idle daydreaming, which is nothing other than a way of avoiding eort
(p. )], and thus eectively singles him out as a particular kind of case.
The same charge of neurosis and lack of any sense of reality is also made
against the narrator in Martereau and Alain Guimier in Le Plantarium.
But at a deeper level, even when the claim that we are all the same
does seem to have some foundation, it fails to settle matters for the
subject by reassuring him that his experience as a subject is shared by
others. Instead, it seems to introduce a constant and thorough-going
uncertainty about where the boundaries between subjects lie. And as
often as not, this becomes a question about whether boundaries exist at
Subjectivity and indistinction :
all. When contact with another is achieved, it is frequently experienced
as a disturbing blurring of boundaries, where the disappearance of
dierence brings fear and havoc rather than peace and harmony. This
ambiguity in the desire for contact is already evident in the passage from
Katherine Manselds Journal from which Sarraute took (and slightly
adapted) the expression the terrible desire to establish contact. In the
context of her discussion of the impulse that determines the psychology
of Dostoevskys characters, it is easy to overlook the fact that Sarraute
herself describes the tone of Katherine Manselds remark as one of
une sorte de crainte et peut-tre un lger dgot (Dostoevski, p. )
[some fear and, perhaps, slight distaste (p. :)]. And indeed the phrase
is used by Katherine Manseld to characterise the overly attentive and
oppressively solicitous behaviour of her friend Ida Baker who nursed her
during her illness:
What I feel is: She is never for one fraction of a second unconscious. If I sigh,
I know that her head lifts. I know that those grave, large eyes solemnly x on
me: Why did she sigh? If I turn she suggests a cushion or another rug. If I turn
again, then it is my back. Might she try to rub it for me? There is no escape. All
night: a faint rustle, the smallest cough, and her soft voice asks: Did you speak?
Can I do anything? If I do absolutely nothing, then she discovers my fatigue
under my eyes. There is something profound and terrible in this eternal desire
to establish contact.
5
Desire for contact here is something to be resisted rather than embraced,
perceived as unwelcome intrusion rather than solace.
This sense that the other is more liable to encroach than to embrace
is just one of the symptoms that marks the precariousness of the bound-
aries that separate Sarrautes subjects from each other. It is this precari-
ousness that I shall be exploring here through the notion of
indistinction, a word already invoked by Jean Blot to characterise one
dimension of Sarrautes contradictory demand for love. Although
Sarrautes characters long for the indistinction of an undivided love,
they also fear the loss of distinctiveness that it would entail. This anxiety
about boundaries is particularly evident in Tropismes, Sarrautes earliest
work. The anonymous characters in these short texts are caught between
two contradictory movements: on the one hand a terror of being
absorbed and assimilated into worlds dominated by others and where
they will cease to be distinct; and, on the other, a fear of the havoc that
will be caused by a self-assertion which they can only conceive of as an
unleashing of chaos and violence. The world of Tropismes (as of Portrait
dun inconnu and Martereau), is one of seeping secretions which threaten to
. Dierence and human relations
engulf a being who, for all his claims about underlying sameness, lives
in perpetual fear of the consequences of being found to be dierent.
The collection opens with a depiction of one of these leaky threats:
Ils semblaient sourdre de partout, clos dans la tideur un peu moite de lair, ils
scoulaient doucement comme sils suintaient des murs, des arbres grillags,
des bancs, des trottoirs sales, des squares. (T, p. ::)
[They seemed to well up from everywhere, burgeoning in the slightly moist
tepidity of the air, they formed a gentle ow as if they were seeping from the
walls, from the trees encased in railings, the benches, the dirty pavements, the
squares. (p. :)]
In Tropismes ii, Sarraute spells out the nature of the threat posed to the
subject by the insinuating existence of a world which is assumed to be
incapable of accepting him either with an undivided love, or as other, let
alone both. The worlds tentacular mode of existence simply denies the
dierence of the subject as other, and works to assimilate him into its
own being: comme une sorte de bave poisseuse leur pense sinltrait
en lui, se collait lui, le tapissait intrieurement (p. :) [like some sort
of sticky slaver, their thought ltered into him, stuck to him, formed a
lining inside him (p. :)]. The provisional, but of course unsustainable,
response envisaged by the subject is a duplicitous placating of the other
that conceals his own inner dierence:
Il fallait leur rpondre et les encourager avec douceur, et surtout, surtout ne pas
leur faire sentir, ne pas leur faire sentir un seul instant quon se croyait dirent.
Se plier, se plier, seacer: Oui, oui, oui, oui, cest vrai, bien sr, voil ce quil
fallait leur dire, et les regarder avec sympathie, avec tendresse, sans quoi un
dchirement, un arrachement, quelque chose dinattendu, de violent allait se
produire, quelque chose qui jamais ne stait produit et qui serait erayant. (p.
::8)
[You had to answer them and encourage them gently, and above all, not make
them feel, not make them feel for a single second, that you think youre dierent.
Be submissive, be submissive, eace yourself: Yes, yes, yes, yes, thats true, thats
certainly true, thats what you should say to them, and look at them warmly,
aectionately, otherwise a rending, a wrenching, something unexpected, some-
thing violent would happen, something that had never happened before and
which would be terrifying. (p. :)]
The assertion of dierence can only be conceived of as a violent separa-
tion (un dchirement, un arrachement [a rending, a wrenching]
those words again) with unimaginably destructive consequences. The
potential violence outlined here is a dysphoric version of the violence of
the epiphany in the Jardin du Luxembourg, because it immediately
Subjectivity and indistinction
encounters a resistant other, rather than a penumbra of acquiescence.
This is confrontation, and confrontation in Sarraute is always a matter
of total victory on one side and of total defeat on the other, with defeat
conceived of as nothing less than wholesale obliteration:
Il lui semblait qualors, dans un dferlement subit daction, de puissance, avec
une force immense, il les secouerait comme de vieux chions sales, les tordrait,
les dchirerait, les dtruirait compltement.
Mais il savait aussi que ctait probablement une impression fausse. Avant
quil ait le temps de se jeter sur eux avec cet instinct sr, cet instinct de dfense,
cette vitalit facile qui faisait leur force inquitante, ils se retourneraient sur lui
et, dun coup, il ne savait comment, lassommeraient. (p. :8)
[It seemed to him then that, in a sudden surge of action, of power, with
immense strength, he would shake them like lthy old rags, would wring them,
tear them, destroy them completely.
But he also knew that this was probably a false impression. Before he would
have time to leap on them with that sure instinct, that instinct for defence, that
easy vitality which constituted their disturbing force, they would turn on him,
and with one blow, he didnt know how, they would knock him senseless. (p. :)]
This terrifying scenario haunts all the encounters that take place in
Nathalie Sarrautes work, as a latent possibility they contain. The same-
ness of subjects on which Sarrautes psychology is predicated is depicted
here in terms of an uncontrollable violence. If dierence is perceived by
all parties as a potential threat, to be dealt with by total obliteration, the
very violence of the clash in and of itself reduces both parties to the
same. This antagonistic sameness is everywhere in Sarraute and, in one
form or another, it characterises the relations between subjects in her
world. Hostility may not always be manifest as outright violence, but the
subject tends to experience himself as a potential provocation or
humiliation of the other.
The main cause of this eect on the other lies in the inherent nature
of subjectivity as matter that lacks shape and consistency and which
therefore cannot easily be contained within limits: cette matire informe
et molle, si fade, celle dont nous sommes faits ici, celle dont je me nourris
[the formless, soft, insipid substance, the one we are made of here, the
one that I feed on], as the narrator of Martereau describes it (p. .o
[p. .o.]). Subjectivity entails intersubjectivity not just because of the
terrible desire to establish contact, nor because of the potential for vio-
lence in all human relations, but because the formlessness of subjectiv-
ity itself is a kind of contagion which, as it seeps across boundaries,
contaminates and disgusts those who encounter it. Moi limpur [I the
Dierence and human relations
impure] says the narrator of Martereau, moi la brebis galeuse, la bte
puante (p. .) [I the black [lit. scabby] sheep, the noisome creature, pp.
68q]. As stench, as liquid or as slobber (bave), subjectivity inltrates
other subjects with its insidious and uncontainable presence. The nar-
rator discovers the subjectivity of Le Vieux and his daughter in Portrait
dun inconnu as a liquid substance that spurts uncontrollably out of them
and spills over him:
Et je sens alors sourdre deux et scouler en un jet sans n une matire trange,
anonyme comme la lymphe, comme le sang, une matire fade et uide qui coule
entre mes mains, qui se rpand . . . (p. 6)
[And then I feel a strange substance welling up out of them in an endless stream,
a substance as anonymous as lymph, or blood, an insipid, liquid substance that
pours through my hands and spreads . . . (p. 6q)]
The forms which had previously given these two characters their dis-
tinctive identities are reduced to a heap of shapeless and colourless
wrappings:
Et il ne reste plus, de leur chair si ferme, colore, veloute de gens vivants,
quune enveloppe exsangue, informe et grise.
[And all that remains of the rm, pink, smooth esh of these living persons, is
a shapeless, grey casing from which all blood has drained away.
As sticky threads, suckers and tentacles (these, along with liquids, are the
metaphors which dominate the early works) subjectivity is set to embroil
the other. Its characteristic mode of being in these guises is insinuation,
adherence, inltration, absorption all of which the other seems instinc-
tively inclined to resist:
il ma aperu de loin, quand je ne le voyais pas, il a senti, ottant, port vers lui
par le courant, quelque chose de mou, de prenant, de asques tentacules, prts
se tendre tout coup vers lui, toutes leurs ventouses souvrant avidement pour
adhrer lui, aspirer . . . il sest recroquevill, durci . . . (M, pp. :)
[he noticed me from a distance, when I couldnt see him, he felt something limp,
prehensile, oating, borne towards him on the current, abby tentacles, ready
to reach out suddenly towards him, all their cups opening avidly to adhere to
him, to suck . . . he shrivelled up, grew hard . . . (p. :.)]
And where the avidities and intrusions of subjectivity do not elicit recoil
in the other who encounters it, they are embraced as self-abasement:
jai accept lavilissante promiscuit, lignominieuse fraternit . . . [. . .] notre
sort est li maintenant, tous les trois, elles et moi, logs la mme enseigne,
rampant dans labjection . . . (p. .q)
Subjectivity and indistinction
[I have accepted their degrading promiscuity, their ignominious comradeship
. . . [. . .]: our fates are joined now, the three of us alike, them and me, were all
in the same boat, grovelling in abjection . . . (p. .)]
Promiscuity and abjection are as eective in producing indistinction as
are the violence described in the episode in Tropismes and the more insidi-
ous forms of inltration that we have examined so far. To exist as a
subject in Sarraute is to exist at the mercy of other subjects, be it by
obliteration, absorption, contagion or abjection. In a sense the whole
aim of Sarrautes work could be seen to be to chart all the possible ways
in which the amorphousness of subjectivity can lead the subject to fall
prey to other subjects, and to record the full variety of pressures that
erode the boundaries separating self from other.
There is, for example, widespread uncertainty about which of the
partners involved in an encounter is the source of whatever is felt to be
happening. The narrator of Martereau is particularly sensitive to this
ambiguity:
je reproduis comme toujours en moi tous ses mouvements, les remous en lui, les
droulements, ou bien est-ce que ce sont mes propres mouvements qui se rper-
cutent en lui? je ne sais pas, je ne lai jamais su: jeu de miroirs o je me perds
mon image que je projette en lui ou celle quil plaque aussitt, frocement sur
moi. (p. .:)
[as always I reproduce inside myself all his reactions, all the currents inside him,
the uncoilings, or is it rather my own reactions that are echoed in him? I dont
know, I never have known: a game of mirrors in which I lose my way my image
which I project onto him, or the one he slaps immediately, savagely onto me?
(p. .)]
Or again: Je ne sais jamais si cest quelque chose en eux qui les gne ou
si cest moi qui leur fais honte sans le vouloir (p. 8) [I never know
whether its something in them that makes them uncomfortable or
whether, without intending to, it is I who cause them to feel ashamed of
themselves (p. .)]. The only answer to this uncertainty is to accept it and
to acknowledge that nous fonctionnons comme des vases communi-
cants (p. :) [we function like communicating vessels (p. ::)].
In other scenarios the other is felt to have the upper hand and to deter-
mine entirely what the subject perceives himself to be:
mallable quil est, dpendant, tremblant, changeant . . . chaque instant sem-
blable au reet de lui-mme quil voit dans les yeux des gens . . . (p. :86)
[hes so malleable, so dependent, tremulous, changeable . . . at each moment,
hes like the reection of himself that he sees in peoples eyes (p. :8)]
6 Dierence and human relations
The formless, impressible nature of subjectivity allows the subject to be
moulded by the view of himself that he meets in the eyes of others. In a
further variant of this plasticity, the subject becomes a kind of
chameleon which takes on the character and hue of the people he nds
himself associated with. One of the multiple selves in Tu ne taimes pas is
described as Lui qui en prsence de nimporte quel groupe de gens se
met leur ressembler. Ils dteignent sur lui . . . (TNTP, p. :o). [The one
who in the presence of any group of people, begins to resemble them.
They rub o on him. lit. their colour rubs onto him p. :o).] Where the
colour was completely drained from Le Vieux and his daughter through
their contact with the narrator in Portrait dun inconnu, here it runs and
rubs o onto the chameleonic subject.
Another more extreme image for the susceptibility of the subject to
the other and which incidentally concretises vividly the issue of
boundaries is that of the subject as a territory invaded by others. The
narrator of Martereau describes himself as a public park overrun by trip-
pers:
Ils entrent sans vergogne, sinstallent partout, se vautrent, jettent leurs dtritus,
dballent leur provisions; il ny a rien respecter, pas de pelouses interdites, on
peut aller et venir partout, amener ses enfants, ses chiens, lentre est libre, je
suis un jardin public livr la foule le dimanche, le bois un jour fri. Pas de
pancartes. Aucun gardien. Rien avec quoi on doive compter. (pp. .)
[They walk in brazenly, sit down all over the place, sprawl about, drop their
litter, unpack their food baskets; theres nothing they need to watch out for, no
grass which you have to keep o, people can come and go as they please, bring
their children and their dogs, entrance is free, I am a public park thrown open
to the Sunday crowds, the woods on a bank holiday. No signs. No wardens.
Nothing anyone is obliged to reckon with. (p. :q)]
The subject here is incapable of guarding the entrance to his territory
(entrance is free), cannot impose prohibition on areas he might want to
keep out of bounds (there is no grass which you have to keep o), and
there is no authority he could appeal to in order to contain or restrain
potential trespassers (No signs. No wardens. Nothing anyone is obliged
to reckon with.)
Elsewhere the territorial image of the self takes the form of con-
quering armies or imperialist invasions.
6
In these scenarios the subject
is, if anything, even more powerless than in the public park to defend
himself against encroachment, since this time the invading other has all
the forces of law and order behind him to back him up:
Subjectivity and indistinction
[l]es fortes personnalits nous envahissent entirement . . . Une puissance occu-
pante qui nous soumet sa loi . . . nous ne pouvons quobir ses ordres . . .
(TNTP, p. )
[such strong personalities completely invade us . . . An occupying force that sub-
jects us to its law . . . we can only obey its orders . . . (p. )]
If the multiple subject of Tu ne taimes pas can live this experience with
more equanimity than the anxious narrators of Portrait dun inconnu and
Martereau, it is not because it has acquired better defences against
encroachment, but because it has reconciled itself to the condition of
subjectivity as territory without boundary. This plural nous is able to
accept the fact that Nous ne sommes quun espace vide o il peut se
dployer . . . (p. .), and to tolerate cette absence chez nous de fron-
tires: chez nous, they acknowledge, entre qui veut (p. o). This is
partly because the amorphousness of subjectivity which allows it to be
conceived as unbounded territory in the rst place, also allows it to be
thought of in terms of plurality and multiplicity. The plural subject
becomes a space peopled by a whole range of possibilities and virtual-
ities which are activated in turn by the various circumstances they
encounter in the outside world. The impurity of the moi whose labile
presence muddies the waters of Martereau evolves in Sarrautes writing
towards a plural nous who can in some measure accommodate and
survive the vagaries of dependency, trespass or what one might call the
chameleonism that encounters with others seem inevitably to entail.
7
But the nature of the relationship remains fundamentally the same.
There is one further manifestation of the boundariless nature of the
subjects existence which is perhaps even more disturbing than any of
the forms we have explored so far. The problem in the cases discussed
previously has largely been about where one subject ends and the other
begins. But, as the violent episode in Tropismes has already hinted, there
is a way in which the indistinction entailed by subjectivity can create
doubts about whether either of the parties involved in an encounter is
responsible for what passes between them. In many instances it is as if
the subject had completely renounced or been stripped of his own
agency, and had relinquished control to some other force which far
exceeds him. Sarrautes subjects frequently show awareness of this
possibility in the habitual use of expressions like Quest-ce qui ta pris?
(DLI, p. :o) [Whats got into you?, (p. 8)], or Je ne sais pas ce qui ma
pris (p. :) [I dont know what got into me (p. :.)], as if the strange
behaviour of the other or even of the self were to be explained in
8 Dierence and human relations
terms of some greater, if ultimately always mysterious power which had
taken him (or oneself) over.
Tropisms are at best only a semi-conscious phenomenon, and it takes
very little for the subjects awareness of them to shade o into a mere
sense of the presence of an unknowable and alien force inhabiting the
space of his subjectivity. Many of Sarrautes characters nd themselves
acting without volition, malgr moi [inspite of myself ]. Or, as the nar-
rator of Martereau puts it, tout moment, des mouvements incon-
trlables magitent . . . (M, p. :o) [at every moment I am prey to
uncontrollable reactions (p. :o)]. Moreover, the eects of these uncon-
trollable movements are not limited to the subject who is galvanised by
them, but through him, they also work on those whom he encounters.
Whatever the nature or the origin of this agitation, it is as palpable for
others as it is involuntary in its subject. The narrator of Portrait dun
inconnu compares the inadvertent inuence of his friend lAlter with that
equally inadvertently exercised by himself:
il agit sur eux comme le moule de pltre sur les os trop mous ou dforms, il les
maintient droits, les redresse; au contraire de moi qui exerce toujours sur eux
une inuence mystrieuse comme celle de la lune sur les mares: je provoque
en eux toujours des courants, des lames de fond, des remous; avec moi ils se
soulvent, sagitent, dbordent, je les lche; lui au contraire, sans le vouloir pro-
bablement ces choses-l, cest toujours inconscient il les tient. (PI, pp. .)
[he acts on them like a plaster cast on bones that are too soft or deformed, he
holds them in place, sets them upright; just the opposite of myself who always
have the same kind of mysterious inuence on them that the moon has on the
tides: I always stir up currents and ground swells and eddies in them; with me
they expand, get excited and spill over, I let them drop; he, on the other hand,
probably without intending to these things are always unconscious holds
them in his grasp. (pp. o:)]
Where the mysterious eect of LAlters existence is to hold and support
his others, the narrator invariably elicits the agitated responses that he
experiences himself. Yet neither of them wills the very divergent reac-
tions they provoke in others. It is no suprise, then, to nd Sarrautes char-
acters describing themselves as des corps conducteurs [conducting
rods],
8
since so often they appear as no more than a passive vehicle for
forces which operate through them and on others.
Sarrautes subjects are agitated and passive in equal measure because
the absence of boundaries deprives subjectivity of the focus that would
make real agency possible. In Sarrautes world relations are governed by
Subjectivity and indistinction q
a principle that produces scenarios which constitute subjects not as
agents amongst other agents, but as mass on the one hand, and vacancy
on the other. Subjects are either accepted as a mass which is allowed to
occupy a vacant space; or they are obliterated by a mass which aggres-
sively treats them as unoccupied territory; or else they are excluded by
another subject (or subjects, since the subject as other tends to prolife-
rate into a plural they); or, again, they are absorbed and assimilated by
the seeping mass of another subject. Being mass rather than agent, the
Sarrautean subject does not so much act, as let himself be propelled or
animated by forces which make him a vehicle or a victim of something
that lies beyond his control. In the extract from Tropismes ii discussed
earlier, the subject is able to envisage himself only as a channel for forces
lying outside him, as acted upon, rather than as the instigator of an event
which could only take place dans un dferlement subit daction, de puis-
sance, avec une force immense [in a sudden surge of action, of power,
with immense strength]. For good and for ill, the subject is subject to
impulses which exceed him, impelled into action by something that is
repeatedly described as plus fort que lui [lit. stronger than him]. And
insofar as he sees himself as the object of actions of others, it is not as
an agent encountering other agents, but as the helpless recipient of a
disturbing force, which in addition to working on the other through
him, can also provide that other with an inexplicable and unopposable
capacity for action. As we saw in the same example from Tropismes: ils
se retourneraient sur lui et, dun coup, il ne savait comment, lassom-
meraient [they would turn on him, and with one blow, he didnt know
how, they would knock him senseless] (my emphasis).
There seems to be a link here between passivity and violence as
related manifestations of the indistinction that the subject encounters
in his dealings with others. By putting the subject at the mercy of
powers which far exceed him, violence places his distinctiveness in
serious jeopardy. Moreover, since violence is also inevitably reciprocal,
that reciprocity itself has the eect of erasing the dierences that might
otherwise separate or distinguish one subject from another. If we are
to believe the anthropologists, this conjunction of sameness and vio-
lence has a larger signicance, which carries important implications for
the understanding of dierence. According to Ren Girard, not only
does violence eradicate dierence by virtue of its reciprocity, but it is
also the result of an eradication of dierence itself. L o la dirence
fait dfaut, he writes, cest la violence qui menace [Wherever
dierences are lacking, violence threatens]. Or again, Ce nest pas la
o Dierence and human relations
dirence, mais bien sa perte qui cause la confusion violente [it is not
dierences, but the loss of them that gives birth to violence and
chaos].
9
Social and cultural order, he claims, relies on the existence of
a set of dierential systems which assign a place and an identity to
every individual. When the dierential order collapses (as we repeat-
edly nd it doing in Sarraute), people are reduced to the same, and this
sameness produces a rivalry that condemns them to a violence which,
for Girard is always a violence of undierentiation (p. 8q [p. ]). In
other words, survival would seem to depend on the possibility of main-
taining dierences.
There is a similar presupposition in Mary Douglass presentation of
the other major source of indistinction that I have been discussing in
Sarraute: pollution.
10
(This word seems a particularly apposite way of
summarising the Sarrautean subjects experience of the leaking bound-
aries as he encounters them both in others and in himself.) For what is
at stake in pollution is a challenge to the particular dierential order
which constitutes the culture of a given society. If (as Mary Douglas has
it) dirt is nothing but matter out of place, then its presence raises ques-
tions about what the proper place of any given matter is, how it is
assigned, and what the particular nature of the symbolic thinking is that
creates these classes and categories for things. Where Girard is more
interested in violence as a phenomenon entailed by the collapse of
dierential systems, Mary Douglas is exploring pollution as a challenge to
these systems. But despite this dierence of emphasis, both thinkers
clearly regard all social and cultural activity as being grounded in, and
dependent on, dierential thinking. And it is precisely this dierential
thinking that is under threat in Nathalie Sarraute.
This brief detour into anthropology is intended as much to provide
some measure of what is at stake in Sarrautes undertaking, as to suggest
an explanatory model for the scenes of mayhem and delement which
regularly occur in her work. For Sarraute not only focuses on episodes
of violence and pollution, or on scenarios that produce the ferocious
rivalry described by Girard, but her whole project is designed to throw
the dierential order into crisis. As we have seen, it does this through her
basic premiss that we are all the same, and through the various ways in
which the boundaries between subjects are persistently eroded. The
result is that they are drawn into a continuum of likeness that the anthro-
pologists tell us represents a threat not just to intelligibility, but to the very
survival of the individual, and to the very possibility of social organisa-
tion.
Subjectivity and indistinction :
ni rrrnrx+i \r svs +rxs
As we have seen, Sarrautes work repeatedly displays a radical scepticism
about the functioning of dierential systems. For the anthropologist (as
for the post-Saussurean literary critic), it would seem axiomatic that all
cultural systems, like language itself, cannot but be dierentially con-
structed. So that, to the extent that, as a writer, Sarraute works both with
language and with literary form, her very enterprise would seem unable
at least, within this frame to avoid working against the indistinction
that constitutes the experience of her subjects. Indeed Ren Girard
speaks of une certaine rpugnance et une certaine impuissance du
langage direnci exprimer leacement de toute dirence (La
Violence, p. :oo) [Being made up of dierences, language nds it almost
impossible to express undierentiation directly (p. 6)]. And he goes so
far as to claim that the loss of dierence brought about by the violence
of rivalrous sameness will actually be negated by language because of its
dierential basis. Similarly, although Mary Douglas has little to say
about language and art as such, she regards cultural institutions as the
means whereby the challenges of impurity and ambiguity may be
accommodated, and this would seem to imply a notion that art oers
new ways of making sense of experience through its ordering in form.
For her, as for Girard, the symbolic thinking through which all experi-
ence is organised, always presupposes thinking in terms of dierences,
categories, classication.
For Sarraute, by contrast, there seems to be nothing inevitable about
linguistic dierence. Systems of classication are regularly mocked in
her writing and dierences never hold. The specialist in Portrait dun
inconnu is presented as someone whose activities are devoted to diagnosis
and categorisation in a manner which is at once futile in its attempt to
establish dierence, and severely lacking in the ability to acknowledge
the true dierence of the narrators experience. His labels prove just to
be a means of disposing of the narrator as part of a job lot of similar
cases:
Ils ont vite fait de ranger tout cela, de le classer leur manire. Elle est tiquete,
jete en vrac avec les autres, dans la mme catgorie, la petite ide, la petite
vision quon a couve, plein de honte et dorgueil, dans la solitude. Elles se
ressemblent toutes, dailleurs, parat-il, quand on les tudie bien. (PI, pp. 68q)
[They tidy it all away in no time, and classify it in their own way. That little
idea, that little vision of yours that you had been brooding over with shame and
pride in solitude, is labelled and tossed in among the others, in the same cate-
gory. In any case, theyre all alike when one studies them closely. (p. .)]
. Dierence and human relations
Dierential categories here simply inict another and worse kind of
indistinction on the subject. Indeed, any language that seeks to categor-
ise is shown in Sarraute to be totally incapable of acknowledging the real
distinctiveness of its object.
Much of the activity of Vous les entendez? turns on the characters expe-
rience of a variety of classications and categories. The father under-
goes an absurd experience when he sets out to nd the right name for
the eect that the presence of his wife has on his relation to works of art.
He visits a kind of reference library in search of this word, and begs the
librarians to check through their card indexes under the heading mal-
heurs. [. . .] Des vrais. Reconnus. Catalogus. Classs. Inscrits sur ches
(VLE, p. 66) [misfortunes. [. . .] Real ones. Acknowledged. Listed.
Classied. Recorded on index cards (p. )]. At his own request he is
eventually redirected to the Dictons [Sayings] section where he grate-
fully accepts the most appropriate saying available: Des gots et des
couleurs (p. 6q) [Theres no accounting for taste (p. o)]. But like all
those in Sarraute who seek to use classications seriously, he nds in the
course of the novel that they simply dont work. There seems, for
example, to be no way of determining whether the childrens laughter
that sounds throughout the novel is innocent or subversive:
Des deux cts des gens parfaitement normaux, des citoyens respectueux des
convenances, obissants aux coutumes, aux lois. Les uns arment que ctaient
des rires innocents. Et un autre rplique conformment au code en vigueur,
faisant usage de ses droits, que ctaient des rires sournois. (p. :6)
[On both sides, perfectly normal people, citizens who respect the proprieties,
observe the customs, the laws. Some assert that it was innocent laughter. And
another replies in accordance with the code currently in force, exercising his
rights, that it was sly laughter. (p. :.q)]
And the children themselves taunt the two old men as they ponder this
question by dangling labels with the alternative verdicts, like paper sh
on All Fools Day, into the room where the father and his friend are
sitting, and using them to tickle the tops of the mens worried heads.
Yet the capacity for noting dierence is at times treated with some nos-
talgia by Sarraute, as if she cannot quite relinquish the longing for
intelligibility and certainty that dierential systems seem to promise. If
Martereau is depicted as someone who will examine pebbles pour dis-
tinguer le silex du schiste [to see whether it was silex or shale], this
capacity for seeing distinctions and making classications is one of the
qualities that mark him out for the narrator as being from an impossibly
distant world which he still longs for, an inhabitant of la patrie lointaine
Subjectivity and indistinction
dont pour des raisons mystrieuses, javais t banni, [. . .] la terre o je
ne pourrais jamais aborder, ballott que jtais sur une mer agite (M,
pp. ) [the distant homeland from which, for mysterious reasons, I
had been banished, [. . .] the land on which I could never step ashore,
tossed about as I was on a rough sea (p. :)]. Similarly, when Natacha
goes to visit her father in his chemical factory and he asks her for her
opinion about the relative qualities of two shades of chrome yellow, she
is clearly tantalised by the way the dierence eludes her:
Il observe longuement lun des petits tas . . . Regarde bien, tu ne trouves pas
quil a moins dclat que lautre? Il est un petit peu plus gristre . . . Je meorce
de voir une dirence . . . Non, je ne vois pas . . . ou peut-tre si, un petit peu
. . . Un peu trop, cest vident, il est plus terne . . . a ne fait rien, je crois que
je sais do a vient, on va refaire a . . . (E, pp. .68q)
[He observes one of the little piles for a long time . . . Look carefully, dont you
think that this one is less bright than the other? It is a little bit more of a greyish
colour . . . I try hard to see a dierence . . . No, I dont see . . . or perhaps I do,
just a little . . . A little bit too much, its obvious, its duller . . . It doesnt matter,
I think I know whats caused it, well have another go . . . (p. .q)]
Natacha seems mystied both by her fathers condent capacity for dis-
crimination and awed by his ability to master it. The factory exists in
another dimension which is also that of M. and Mme Florimond, pre-
cursors of Martereau and his wife. It is a world devoted to the manu-
facturing of dyes with a process which, thanks to a discovery made by
Nathalie Sarrautes chemist father, prevents colours from fading and
running.
11
In the end, the world of the Martereaus (and perhaps, by
implication, of the idealised Florimonds) crumbles under the pressure of
the narrators explorations. And in the everyday experience of human
relations, the chemistry of Monsieur Tcherniak in his factory at Vanves,
proves powerless to counter the eects of the tropism as colour repeat-
edly fades (as it does from the casings of Le Vieux and his daughter in
Portrait dun inconnu), or runs from one subject to another (as it does with
the chameleonic gure in Tu ne taimes pas).
However much they might be longed for at given moments, meaning-
ful dierences cannot be sustained in Sarrautes world, and far from
structuring the experience which is lived within it, any would-be cate-
gories survive only in vestigial forms as the last-ditch devices that char-
acters call on in moments of desperation in an attempt to limit or
contain the leaky threats they encounter. When the image of the grand-
mother implied by the words Elle est mignonne, elle est croquer
[Shes sweet, couldnt you just eat her up?] in disent les imbciles begins
Dierence and human relations
to wobble, this is represented as an alarming haemorrhage requiring
classications to stem the ow:
a dferle, une masse bouillonnante, elle coule sans n, mentrane . . .
Arrtez a . . . Au secours . . . Amenez des cloisonnements, sparez, enfer-
mez ce qui coule delle, spand . . . arrtez-le . . . Vous avez tout ce quil faut
pour le canaliser, lemprisonner, le rduire, toutes vos catgories, toute votre
psychologie . . . vite, endiguons, enserrons, dirigeons, amenons les mots fab-
riqus tout exprs, destins cet usage . . . les voici, prenons-les: rvolte, besoins
rfrns, dsirs vivaces, aussi vivaces quautrefois, renoncements, rancunes,
fureurs, mutilations, petites lchets, hypocrisie, intrpidit, mchancet, bont,
navet, lucidit, sensualit . . . Voil, petit petit les ots sapaisent, je mapaise
. . . La crise est passe. (DLI, p. .o)
[it pours forth, a boiling mass, it keeps on owing, dragging me along with it . . .
Stop that . . . Help . . . Put up partitions, separate, shut in whats pouring out of
her, spreading . . . stop it . . . You have everything you need to channel it, capture
it, overpower it, all your categories, all your psychology . . . quick, lets damn it
up, enclose, direct, bring on the specially created words, designed for this
purpose . . . here they are, lets have them: revolt, repressed needs, inveterate
desires, as inveterate as they were in the past, renunciations, resentments, rages,
mutilations, petty cowardice, hypocrisy, intrepidity, malice, kindness, navety,
clear-sightedness, sensuality . . . There, little by little the ood is calming down,
I am calming down . . . The crisis has passed. (p. :8)]
As often with Sarrautes classicatory lists on these occasions, categories
are treated with increasing disdain, and opposites are heaped up pell-
mell and regardless of their contradictions (hypocrisie/intrpidit,
mchancet/bont, navet/lucidit [hypocrisy/intrepidity, malice/kindness,
navety/clear-sightedness]). The characteristically Sarrautean indierence
to linguistic dierence on this occasion merely underscores the fact that
the ultimate (if ultimately futile) aim of such distinctions is to support a
desperate attempt on the part of a subject under threat to deal with the
uncontainable subjectivity of the other.
It seems impossible for Sarrautes characters to treat linguistic
dierences as anything other than a means of limiting, containing,
repressing or imprisoning the threat that the other represents. The very
phrase disent les imbciles [fools say], rather than categorising a certain
kind of behaviour (what fools say as distinct from what wise men might
say), has as its most urgent purpose the containing of what is most alarm-
ing in the other:
Il a d tracer ces mots dans un moment de dgot, de fureur, quand il sest
approch de cela, quand il a senti sen dgager cette louche odeur . . . Il a voulu
Subjectivity and indistinction
empcher que dautres touchent cela, subissent la contagion . . . [. . .] Il a voulu
lentourer de barbels lectris, menacer, saisir, brutaliser, mettre au pilori,
dsigner lopprobre, exposer aux railleries ceux qui sen emparent et le pro-
pagent . . . (pp. )
[He must have written those words in a moment of disgust, of rage, when he
had got close to it, when he smelled that dubious odour coming from it . . . He
wanted to keep others from touching it, from being infected by it . . . [. . .] He
wanted to surround it with electried barbed wire, threaten, seize, bully, pillory,
designate for opprobrium, expose to jeers all those who appropriate it and pro-
pagate it . . . (p. .)]
The spilling liquid matter, the foul smells and the contagions which are
the forms in which subjectivity merges into intersubjectivity, are not
something which Sarrautes characters can ever hope to dene or to
categorise. Their recourse to language in the face of it is no more than
a panic-stricken raid on an indistinct mass of words which they pile
up like sandbags against a rising ood of equally indistinct subjectiv-
ity.
Nevertheless, Sarrautes subjects do not always experience the indis-
tinction of their encounters with others as threat, and there are occa-
sions when the blurring of boundaries between characters is presented
as uncomplicatedly euphoric. In these scenes, the characters positively
revel in the uid connections which link them to each other. But even
here language is shown to pose a problem. Indeed, whereas the threat in
the previous examples came from the uncontainable nature of the
others presence, in these instances it is language itself which is the
source of anxiety. For under these happy circumstances characters expe-
rience any categorisation as cruel separation or incarceration. The
section entitled Ton pre. Ta sur [Your father. Your sister] in LUsage
de la parole explores just such a moment where the intimate embrace of
family relations is destroyed by the mothers insistence on dening the
dierent roles of the family members: ton pre, ta sur. The moist
indistinction of the family bond is destroyed by a brutal naming of parts:
Ils taient l tous quatre pelotonns, serrs les uns contre les autres, leurs con-
tours mous, moelleux se fondant se confondant ils ne sentent pas o lun nit
o lautre commence . . . ils sont une boule vivante humecte de chaudes moi-
teurs, imprgne dintimes, de fades, de douces odeurs . . . quand tout coup
elle sest dgage, elle sest souleve . . . l-bas au-dehors on appelait, on cognait
contre la porte . . .
Elle les a secous, elles les a obligs se rveiller, se dtacher les uns des
autres [. . .] . . . Vous voyez, nous voici, je peux vous aider faire le recense-
ment. Voici devant vous: le pre. Voici la lle. Ici cest le ls. Et moi je suis la
mre. (UP, pp. )
6 Dierence and human relations
[There they were, all four of them, so close, pressing against each other, their
soft, yielding contours melting and merging into one another so that they no
longer know where one ends and the other begins . . . they are a living ball,
damp with warm moisture, imbued with intimate, stale, sweet odours . . . when
all of a sudden, she detached herself, she got up . . . someone from outside was
knocking at the door . . .
She shook them, she forced them to wake up, to detach themselves from one
another [. . .] . . . You see, here we are, I can help you do your census. Here, in
front of you: the father. Here is the daughter. This is the son. And I am the
mother. (p. o)]
The mothers invocation of familial categories separates each member
of the family from the others, introducing distance as well as dierence
between them:
La distance qui les spare les uns des autres est la bonne distance, ncessaire et
susante. Certaine, comme celles indiques prs du nom de chaque localit sur
les pancartes et les bornes disposes le long des routes. Immuable. jamais
xe. (pp. 6)
[The distance that separates the ones from the others is the right, the necessary
and sucient distance. Unequivocal, like those shown beside the name of every
locality on the signposts and milestones along the roadside. Immutable. Fixed
for all time. (p. )]
In introducing this distance between them, not only does the mother put
an end to the murky indistinctions of intersubjectivity (Pas de
uctuations possibles, dcarts brusques, darrachements, de rapproche-
ments imprvus, de soudaines fusions [No potential uctuations,
abrupt sidesteps, separations, unexpected rapprochements, sudden
fusions]); but she also places an insuperable distance between herself
and the rest of the family, moving completely outside their world, into
an inaccessible beyond:
Mais alors, comment se fait-il quelle, la mre . . . elle ntait pas l o elle devait
se trouver, o on la trouve dordinaire, entre son mari, sa lle et son ls. Elle
tait aussi loin deux quune trangre quand, sadressant lenfant, elle a
dsign les autres par ces mots: Ton pre Ta soeur . . . (pp. 6)
[But then, how is it that she, the mother . . . wasnt where she should have been,
where we usually nd her, between her husband, her daughter and her son. She
was as far away from them as a stranger, when, addressing the child, she referred
to the others with these words: Your father. Your sister. (p. )]
Where this other world had seemed to the narrator of Martereau like an
Eden from which he felt painfully banished, paradise now appears as the
blurred and uncircumscribed world in which the mother gures only as
a stranger and from which she has abruptly removed herself.
Subjectivity and indistinction
In a moment of insight towards the end of Vous les entendez? the father
seems to realise that this banishment (whichever direction it operates in,
that of the excluded narrator in Martereau or the self-imposed exile of the
mother in Ton pre. Ta sur) is the consequence of invoking distinc-
tions. In response to his childrens challenge, he therefore abandons his
quest to dene their laughter:
Quest-ce que a veut dire, quest-ce que a peut bien signier pour nous:
Sournois? Moqueur? Innocent? . . . Innocent, tu le sais bien, ne valait pas
mieux. Comment as-tu pu penser que ces mots grossiers lusage des autres,
des trangers . . . ces mots tirs de leurs lexiques, de leurs dictionnaires . . . (pp.
6)
[What does it mean, what can possibly be the sense for us of: Sly? Mocking?
Innocent? . . . Innocent, you know very well, was no better. How could you think
that those ordinary words, designed to be used by other people, by strangers . . .
those words taken from their lexicons, their dictionaries . . . (p. )]
Even the label innocent would settle nothing since categories of what-
ever kind are a currency used only by strangers. The father endorses his
childrens rejection of denitions and embraces the uid indistinctions
of the world of his family:
Cest vrai, ils ont raison, comment ces vieux mots sclross pourraient-ils
retenir, enserrer ce qui sans cesse entre nous circule, si uide, uctuant, ce qui
chaque instant se transforme, spand dans tous les sens, ne se laisse arrter
par aucune borne . . . ce qui est nous, nous seuls . . . Quel mot venu du dehors
peut-il mettre de lordre entre nous, nous sparer ou nous rapprocher? . . . (p.
:.)
[Its true, they are right, how could those old sclerotic words retain, enclose the
uid, uctuating thing that circulates amongst us, constantly being trans-
formed, spreading in every direction, that no boundary can stop . . . that is ours,
ours alone . . . What word from without can set things right between us, separ-
ate us or bring us together? . . . (p. :6)]
In those scenes where words do momentarily seem capable of more than
mere containment, and where their capacity to dierentiate and dis-
criminate is in some degree desired, that dierentiation is nevetheless
presented as something divisive and impoverishing.
This is because the dierential nature of language is profoundly at
odds with the sameness of intersubjective exchange and with the indis-
tinction of subjective experience. The reason for this is that the
dierential function relates language to its subject matter on an axis of
negation or repudiation. As bulwark or as bound words are merely
8 Dierence and human relations
massed up in defence against encroaching matter. As discrimination,
they divide person from person, and place speaker and object in worlds
that are irrevocably exiled from each other. If language for Sarraute can
never operate eectively as a signifying system, this is as much as any-
thing because, rather than analyse or explain from without, it becomes
an integral part of the experience which the work is seeking to convey.
Words seem unable to gain any analytical purchase on an experience
which is presented as one of blurred boundaries, violent confusions,
creeping encroachments or very occasionally as harmonious fusions;
and instead they become embroiled in the very processes they evoke.
The intersubjective dynamic which governs existence for Sarrautes sub-
jects and condemns them in their dealings with each other to an alterna-
tion between indistinction and rebu, contact and exclusion, also
contaminates the language that they use to articulate their experience.
Dierences of whatever kind, it would seem, are always caught up in
human relations.
Subjectivity and indistinction q
cn\r+rn +nnrr
Abjection into art
\n rc+i ox
One of the most striking features of Sarrautes work is the degree of
commitment exhibited in it to the indistinction it portrays. It is not just
the familial embrace of Vous les entendez? or Ton pre. Ta sur which
the characters yearn for, since even where embrace is lived as threat or
contamination it is nevertheless ardently sought. The narrators discov-
ery of the liquid subjectivity of Le Vieux and his daughter in Portrait dun
inconnu is, for all its contamination, the gratifying outcome of the obses-
sive pressure he exerts on the surface of these gures in the hopes, pre-
cisely, that they will yield the sticky substance of their inner being:
Moi, je ne sais [. . .] que tourner autour deux, cherchant avec un acharnement
maniaque la fente, la petite ssure, ce point fragile comme la fontanelle des
petits enfants, o il me semble que quelque chose, comme une pulsation peine
perceptible, aeure et bat doucement. L je maccroche, jappuie. (PI, pp. 66)
[[. . .] all I am able to do is hover about them and try with fanatical eagerness
to nd the crack, the tiny crevice, the vulnerable spot, as delicate as a babys
fontanelle, where I seem to see something that resembles a barely perceptible
pulsation, swell and begin to throb gently. I cling onto it and press. (pp. 68q)]
The reward for this maniacal attention is the stream of strange liquid
which bursts out of them and engulfs him.
The anthropologists cannot help here because their evidence demon-
strates that no human society willingly sustains this degree of unclarity.
Instead, we are dealing in Sarraute with something much more like the
phenomenon that Julia Kristeva has described as abjection.
1
Sarrautes
characters willingly portray themselves as grovelling in abjection (see
Chapter ., pp. 6), and one can recognise much of Sarrautes world
in Kristevas account of this condition. For example, Kristeva writes: Il
y a, dans labjection, une de ces violentes et obscures rvoltes de ltre
contre ce qui le menace et qui lui parat venir dun dedans ou dun
6o
dehors exorbitant (p. q) [There looms, within abjection, one of those
violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to
emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside (p. :)]; and the violence,
the obscurity, the revolt, the exorbitance and the threat which comes as
much from the forces within as well as from an overwhelming without,
all have their counterparts in the world of Sarrautes writing. And like
so many of Sarrautes subjects, the subject of Kristevas abjection nds
himself in a world of uncertain boundaries, which never succeed in
ensuring protection against whatever threatens him: Frontire sans
doute, labjection est surtout ambigut. Parce que, tout en dmarquant,
elle ne dtache pas radicalement le sujet de ce qui le menace au contra-
ire, elle lavoue en perptuel danger (p. :) [We may call it a border, but
abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while it demarcates, it does not
radically separate the subject from what threatens it on the contrary,
abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger (p. q)]. More par-
ticularly, these boundaries fail to defend him against an other who is
already a part of him: Je nprouve de labjection que si un Autre sest
plant en lieu et place de ce qui sera moi (p. :8) [I experience abjec-
tion only if an Other has set himself up in the place and the stead of
what will be me (p. :o)]. The subjects attempts at demarcation always
become violent expulsions or exclusions of an other from whom he
nevertheless never succeeds in denitively separating himself. And his
habitat is precisely the territoires encore instables (p. :8) [yet unstable
territories (p. ::)] where he, just like the Sarrautean subject, wanders in
a perpetual state of disorientation and exile.
So there would seem to be a strong family resemblance between
Kristevas subject of abjection and the bearers of Sarrautes tropisms.
But beyond providing us with the critical satisfaction of noting this like-
ness, the concept of abjection may help us go some way towards under-
standing why Sarrautes characters remain so determinedly within their
disturbing and indistinct condition. As we have seen, this has partly to do
with the impossibility of constructing a stable and eective dierential
system of meaning within it. The condition of abjection is one where
demarcation never manages to create clear and reliable distinctions, and
where oppositions, though violent, remain permeable and unstable.
When the subject in abjection encounters structures of meaning, he does
so only as a series of commands and injunctions which he experiences
as aect rather than sign. This is exactly how the Sarrautean subject
experiences language, treating every denition as a gesture of provoca-
tion, exclusion or rejection. Finally and perhaps most promisingly of
Abjection into art 6:
all Kristeva may also help us in coming to grips with Sarrautes enter-
prise through her claim that literature has a unique and privileged role
in relation to abjection. For she argues that in the modern era, where
religion and the sacred have lost their power to deal with contamination,
literature oers a kind of solution. This it does through its capacity at
once to articulate abjection and to transcend it: lexprience artistique
[est] enracine dans labject quelle dit et par l mme purie (p. .)
[artistic experience [. . .] is rooted in the abject it utters and by the same
token puries (p. :)]. In other words, Kristeva is suggesting that, far
from working against the indistinctions of violence and pollution by
virtue of its inherently structured quality and the dierential nature of
the language it uses, modern literature actually works with the kind of
subject matter that she is exploring in the condition of abjection.
2
Supported by this hypothesis, the way now seems open to explore in
more detail how Sarrautes writing is able to sustain such a degree of
commitment to indistinction, and in particular, how her embroiling of
language in indistinction might come about.
vonns
Nathalie Sarrautes work is deeply and increasingly preoccupied with
words and with what words do. From Les Fruits dor onwards the focal
point of many of the dramas staged in her writing turns on words and
the eect that they create on those around them. Whole plays are
devoted to worrying at a single phrase (Cest beau, Cest bien, a), or
to agonising about a possible lie, a persistent silence, an idiosyncratic
pronunciation.
3
The novels Vous les entendez?, disent les imbciles and Tu ne
taimes pas revolve around the utterances that provide their titles. Enfance
is a record of remembered remarks; and the texts which make up LUsage
de la parole (whose title alone speaks volumes on this topic), each explore
the fate of a phrase (Ich sterbe, Ton pre. Ta sur), or chart the
vagaries of verbal exchange between two speakers.
When Nathalie Sarraute remarks that Mes vritables personnages,
mes seuls personnages, ce sont les mots [My real characters, my only
characters, are words], she is conveying some sense of the degree and
intensity of the preoccupation with words in her work, governing as they
do so many of the encounters between her characters.
4
She is also antici-
pating her latest work, Ouvrez, where words are quite literally the central
characters: Des mots, des tres vivants parfaitement autonomes, sont les
protagonistes de chacun de ces drames [Words, perfectly autonomous
6. Dierence and human relations
living beings are the protagonists of each of these dramas], she writes
in the blurb (which here is printed as part of the text). In each of the
fteen short texts that make up the book, a variation on the basic sce-
nario described in the blurb is acted out:
Ds que viennent des mots du dehors, une paroi est dresse. Seuls les mots capa-
bles de recevoir convenablement les visiteurs restent de ce ct. Tous les autres
sen vont et sont pour plus de sret enferms derrire la paroi.
[As soon as words from outside appear, a partition goes up. Only the words
which are capable of giving a proper reception to visitors remain on this side of
it. All the others disappear and for greater safety are locked up behind the parti-
tion.]
This exclusion of unsuitable words, and their longing for acceptance in
the lexicon of the well-behaved recall many similar scenes in Sarrautes
other work. Only here, as she says, the protagonists are words words
like Pourtant [However], or Au revoir [Goodbye] who erupts a little
prematurely in the course of a telephone conversation, or rr xox
[+nr x\xr] who consorts with an equally prestigious rnrxox [rins+
x\xr]. Narrated entirely in dialogue form, the book presents its multi-
ple protagonists very much as the verbal equivalents of the multiple
subject of Tu ne taimes pas. Verbal relations would seem, then, to be vir-
tually indistinguishable from human relations.
If words have this central status in Sarraute it is largely because their
capacity to produce eects on their recipients far exceeds their capacity
to signify. Language here is performative rather than constative (to
borrow the terms of L.J. Austins How to do Things with Words).
5
And this
is so because in her world discourse is always powerfully directed at an
other, its recipient. As Monique Wittig has said, Sarrautes work is con-
cerned with locution insofar as it is above all interlocution, that is to say,
all that occurs between people when they speak.
6
In these circum-
stances words are far more likely to cross boundaries than they are to
create them. Language in Sarraute powerfully privileges what Roman
Jakobson calls the phatic and the conative dimensions of language over
the referential one, the set towards contact and the set towards the
addressee often overriding or even precluding any set towards the
context.
7
Many of the texts in LUsage de la parole illustrate this emphasis very
graphically, narrating the circumstances and the tenor of the various
exchanges they stage, rather than their content. In Et pourquoi pas?
[And why not?] two interlocutors are introduced, but the topic of their
Abjection into art 6
conversation is instantly dismissed as irrelevant: ils discutent dvne-
ments, ils mettent des opinions . . . rien de plus banal (UP, p. )
[theyre talking about current events, theyre expressing opinions . . .
nothing could be more banal (p. :)]. Attention then shifts to the tone
of the discussion (Oui, le ton, cest bien vrai, a une grande importance.
Cest le ton qui fait la musique, disait un vieux dicton . . . [Yes, its
true, the tone is very important. As the old saying has it: Its not what
you say, its the way you say it]), and from there to the rules of conversa-
tional engagement, still resolutely avoiding all issues of subject matter:
la proie pour nous ne se trouve pas dans la validit de telle ou telle ide
. . . (p. q) [our prey isnt to be found in the validity of this or that idea
(p. )]. Taking ideas and the content of words seriously is no more than
a charade required by the rules of the game as a means of ensuring the
real business of the encounter: contact with the other. So that when one
of the speakers refuses to play his part by appearing not to respond to
the meaning of the words, this is felt by the rst speaker to be a destruc-
tive resistance, rather than a failure to take on board the content of his
utterance:
Sur cet tre les paroles charges de sens, lourdes dides nont plus prise . . . elles
ne prennent plus. Nul lieu o se poser, plus de terrain datterrissage . . . comme
dans lapesanteur elles ottent, volettent . . . son regard de fauve, de maniaque
les observe, il les attrape, les presse, les crase, leur sens gicle, sparpille, et il
coute ravie le bruit que font en tombant, renvoyes par lui l-bas, leurs
enveloppes asques . . . (p. )
[These words, laden with signicance, weighed down with ideas no longer have
any purchase on this being . . . they no longer take. Theres nowhere for them
to touch down, no landing strip . . . they oat and utter as if in weightlessness
. . . his wild animals gaze, his maniacs eye observes them, he catches them,
squeezes them, crushes them, their meaning spurts out, disperses, and he listens
with delight to the sound they make as their oppy casings, ung back by him,
fall to the ground . . . (pp. qo)]
The meaning of the words is reduced to just another one of Sarrautes
indistinct but very material liquid substances, spurting, spattering and
besmirching the subjects who are drawn into engagement through their
medium.
Aside from tone and the protocols of exchange, Sarrautes characters
are unusually sensitive to the physical quality of words. They are fre-
quently shown to respond reactively and purely physiologically to their
eects, like a living organism to an allergen or a wasp-sting. For example,
the accent gouape [mock tough accent] which is occasionally heard
6 Dierence and human relations
in her novels invariably produces an instinctive revulsion in the person
who hears it. Regardless of the actual words spoken (vacances, valise
[holiday, suitcase]), the accent itself is experienced in terms that recall
the amorphous, intrusive and contaminating nature of subjectivity itself:
Les molles voyelles graisseuses impitoyablement sur lui stirent, stalent, se
vautrent . . . Ces vaaacances . . . la courte consonne nale apporte un bref rpit,
et puis on va recommencer . . . le soooleil . . . laaa meeer . . . le liquide aux relents
fades quelles dgorgent lasperge . . . (EVM, p. q)
[Pitilessly, the lazy, unctuous vowels stretch, wallow and sprawl all over him . . .
The holidaaays . . . the short nal consonant brings a brief respite, and then itll
start up again . . . the suhhn . . . the seeea . . . the stale-smelling liquid that they
disgorge splashes over him . . . (p. )]
The mere sound of these words takes the form of yet another liquid
assault on the subjects defences.
In short, words in Sarraute have a way of getting inside those who
hear them. They are experienced more than they are understood.
8
This
is partly because they so often provide the combatants in her world with
the arsenal they require to defend themselves against each other, since
words are, as Sarraute writes in Lre du soupon, larme quotidienne,
insidieuse et trs ecace dinnombrables petits crimes (Conversation,
p. :o) [the insidious and often very eective, daily weapon used in
countless minor crimes (p. :oq)]. Whether as weapon, as allergen, or as
liquid, words have an insidious capacity, like subjectivity itself, to cross
boundaries and get under the skin of their recipients. Lucette Finas was
one of the rst critics to appreciate the extent of the role that Sarraute
accords to words, noting that their importance in her work is indis-
tinguishable from their eect. As she says, le mot, ds quil nest plus
peru avec indirence, mais ressenti par le moi tout entier, se fait chair
et monte sur la scne. Le malaise quprouve, la rception du mot,
son destinataire, fait de ce mot un poids vivant [as soon as it ceases to
be perceived with indierence, but is felt by the self in its entirety, the
word becomes esh and steps onto the stage. The uneasiness which its
addressee feels on receiving the word turns it into an active force].
9
And she goes on to summarise very astutely the kinds of activity
ascribed to words by Sarraute which make them capable of producing
these eects:
Le mot sourd et suinte; il ltre, sinltre, colle, tapisse. Au mieux, il est l de la
vierge, mais, assez souvent, odeur fade et chaude, vapeur lourde, plante sous-
marine tapisse de ventouses, longs anneaux visqueux, sangsue, limace colle
partout et rpandant son suc.[. . .] Le mot, en eet, est investi de tous pouvoirs.
Abjection into art 6
Il aire, aguiche, sallume, tend le cou, bave, absorbe, farfouille, roule, ptrit. (pp. :, .,
italics in original)
[The word seeps and oozes; it leaks out, it inltrates, sticks, plasters over. At best,
it is a gossamer thread, but, frequently, a stale warm smell, a heavy vapour, an
under-water plant coated with suckers, long viscous rings, a slug sticking to
everything and spreading its juice. [. . .] In fact, the word is invested with every
kind of power. It snis, tantalises, ares up, cranes its neck, slobbers, soaks up, rummages,
rolls things over, kneads.]
The malaise which Lucette Finas identies as the characteristic response
to words in Sarrautes work derives entirely from the nature of these
actions. Not only do words do (rather than signify), but their doing adopts
the same forms as the behaviour we have observed taking place between
subjects: inltrating, insinuating, adhering, leaking, tracking, crushing,
and so on.
Charged with aect rather than with meaning, words enter the
subjects body and become lodged inside him.
10
But they are just as fre-
quently projected outwards as attack, or as the vomit in which the
subject of abjection tries to expel the alien other that is also himself. The
following example from Martereau illustrates nicely the two-way trac
that words engage in:
Les mots qui nous ont humilis, si nous navons pas la force, la rapidit de
rexes, ladresse et le courage parfois assez grands quil faut pour riposter, sont
comme les projectiles quon na pas pu ou quon a nglig dextraire aussitt de
la chair: ils restent enfoncs en nous, senkystent, risquent de former des
tumeurs, des abcs o la haine peu peu samasse. [. . .] Un beau jour, au
moment pour lui, et pour elle aussi probablement, le plus imprvu, la haine
amasse en elle viendra aeurer la surface, lui gicler dans les yeux. (M, p. )
[Words that have humiliated us, if we dont have the force, the speed of reex,
the cunning and the courage that you need to retort, are like projectiles which
we have not been able to, or have neglected to extract straight away from our
esh: they remain embedded in us, become encysted and risk forming tumours,
or abcesses in which hatred gradually amasses. [. . .] One ne day, at the most
unexpected moment for him, and for her too, probably, the hatred that has
amassed in her will come to the surface, and spurt right out into his eyes. (p. .8)]
There is violence and pollution here in equal measure (signalled in all
the extracts in this section through the presence of the words gicler [spurt]
and asperger [splash], both of which imply a combination of aggression
and contamination); and it is through both eects that words become
embedded within the subject. In short, then, rather than oer control or
mastery of abjection from without, words as they are used in Sarrautes
work, would seem to partake of its very substance and dynamic.
66 Dierence and human relations
scrxrs or x\nn\+i ox
It is not just ordinary words which function in this way in Sarraute. For
her work contains several depictions of mini-narratives or prototypes of
her own literary project which are drawn into a very similar kind of
dynamic. From time to time, the texts present us with characters desper-
ate to narrate versions of her own insights about psychic existence, and
their attempts are almost always treated by the recipients of these narra-
tions as forms of aggression or contamination. The opening pages of
Portrait dun inconnu plunge us into just such a scene, as the narrator tries
to persuade an anonymous and decidedly resistant group of listeners to
accept both his intuition and the language he wants to use to convey it.
As with so many of the actions that erupt in the intersubjective encoun-
ters in Sarrautes work, the narrators desire to narrate stems from an
impulse that is plus fort que lui [something he couldnt help, lit.
stronger than him]. The result is that the contamination he is seeking to
describe in his dealings with the anonymous elle seems to be exactly
reenacted in the narrators address to his listeners. He asks: navaient-
ils pas senti, parfois, quelque chose qui sortait delle, quelque chose de
mou, de gluant, qui adhrait et aspirait sans quon sache comment et
quil fallait soulever et arracher de sa peau comme une compresse
humide lodeur fade, doucetre . . . (PI, p. :8) [hadnt they sometimes
sensed something that she exuded, something soft and gluey, that stuck
to them, absorbent, without their knowing how, something they had to
take hold of and tear o their skins, like a damp compress with a stale,
sweetish smell . . . (p. :8)]. And their response implies that for them the
narrators question is itself just as insinuating and repellent as the phe-
nomenon he is evoking: Ctait dangereux, trop fort, et ils avaient
horreur de cela [This was dangerous, it was going too far, and they
hated that]. The narrators insistence appears to his listeners as quelque
chose en moi de louche [something ambiguous in me] against which
they feel the need to defend themselves, or as if it were itself a glutinous
and nauseating compress that they wanted to rip away from their skin.
This they do through a recourse to one of the peremptory classications
that we have already seen Sarrautes characters resort to under threat of
encroachment: Cest un vieil goste. [. . .] Et elle, cest une maniaque
(p. :q) [Hes a selsh old man. [. . .] And as for her, shes just a crank].
These verdicts are perceived by the narrator as being designed to keep
him and the insidious intuitions that he shares with his creator, at arms
length.
Alain Guimier comes up against a similar sort of resistance in his
Abjection into art 6
mother-in-law when, in telling the story about his aunt and the oval
door, he asserts that he and his aunt are the same: bien sr que je lui
ressemble. Nous nous ressemblons comme deux gouttes deau [of
course Im like her. We are as alike as two peas in a pod]. He then goes
on to round o his tale by provocatively telling his audience that a ne
vous intresserait pas tant, vous non plus, si vous-mme et nous tous ici,
nous navions pas un petit quelque chose quelque part, bien cach, dans
un recoin bien ferm . . . (P, p. ) [You wouldnt be so interested by it
either, if you yourself and all of us here, didnt have a little something
somewhere, hidden away, in some sealed recess . . . (p. :)] It is this claim
repeatedly made by Nathalie Sarraute herself which Alains mother-
in-law nds intolerable and which incites in her a violent desire for
retaliation:
Ce qui donne soif de vengeance, ce qui donne envie de courir, de le saisir par
les paules et de lui crier ses vrits, la vrit pas bonne dire, trs mauvaise
dire pour lui si on osait, si on navait pas honte de lhumilier, cest davoir eu
laudace de la mettre dans le mme bain, dinsinuer quelle aussi, comme cette
famille de fous . . . (pp. qo)
[What makes you thirst for vengeance, what makes you feel like running and
taking him by the shoulders and telling him some home truths, the kind of
truths that are not pleasant to hear, very unpleasant for him to hear if you dared,
if you werent ashamed to humiliate him, it was his having the nerve to put her
in the same basket, to insinuate that she too, like that family of lunatics . . . (pp.
6)]
Alains story is perceived as an unwarranted insinuation, a transgression
of the bounds of decency, a humiliation which prompts in her an
impulse towards counter-humiliation in short, as an abjection.
Even the most compliant of listeners is liable to respond in this way
to accounts of the tropism. The narrators friend, LAlter, in Portrait dun
inconnu is described by him as well-trained and largely complicit with
the sort of view that these mini-narratives usually contain. But here, the
warm bath of intimacy which they are able to establish as the context
for their narrations is nevertheless threatened by the possibility of
LAlters resistance. The narrators evocation of a world of suckers (ven-
touses) and larvae meets with a lack of positive response in his friend: Je
sens quil naime pas cela. [. . .] Il parat mal laise, gn (PI, p. 6) [I
sense that he doesnt like it [. . .]. He seems ill at ease, embarrassed (pp.
6)]. And the narrator is left feeling that he has pushed things too far,
and that in giving way to the urgency of his desire to share his discovery,
he has merely debased and prostituted himself:
68 Dierence and human relations
cest plus fort que moi: je ne peux pas rsister ce besoin, ds que je sens poindre
au loin le moindre semblant de succs, de retarder leort nal, de me dtendre
tout de suite, de jouer, de savourer sans n lattente, ce besoin, surtout, tou-
jours, de me galvauder. (pp. 8q)
[its too much for me: I cant resist a certain need I have, as soon as I notice the
slightest semblance of success on the horizon, to postpone the ultimate eort,
to relax straight away, to play around, endlessly relishing the anticipation; above
all, I can never resist the need to debase myself. (p. q)]
The narrators attempt to evoke a world of abjection becomes itself the
means of his own abjection.
The atmosphere of danger which surrounds attempts to recount this
kind of subject matter extends by implicaton to the relation between
Sarraute herself and her readers. In one of the texts in LUsage de la parole,
Eh bien quoi, cest un dingue . . . [So what, hes crazy . . .] this implica-
tion becomes explicit. The text stages (albeit in a mock ironic and heavily
self-conscious manner) one of these mini-narrations involving two like-
minded partners, more in the mould of the scene with LAlter than of
the one between Alain Guimier and his mother-in-law. The narrator of
the mini-narrative is certain that he can count on the fact that his friends
responses are the same as his own: par-del quelques apparences,
quelques dtails de peu dimportance lautre lui ressemble . . . (UP, p.
:::) [beyond a few appearances and a few minor details, the other
resembles him (p. ::)]. And he launches into a description of an
episode which has echoes both of Le Vieuxs anxious night-time wan-
derings and his discovery of the leak in the bathroom, and of Tante
Berthes experience with her door perceptible echoes, that is, of
Sarrautes own work. At one point in his narration, the narrator appeals
very strongly to his listener for a shared perception of the scene he is
describing:
Est-il possible que vous ne perceviez pas comme moi? . . . et on se met racon-
ter, on insiste avec avidit, avec espoir . . . tout comme celui qui maintenant
montre lautre, le tire, veut le forcer . . . Ici, regardez . . . (p. :::)
[Is it possible that you havent noticed, as I have? . . . and one starts telling, one
insists eagerly, condently . . . just like the man who is now showing the other,
tugging at him, trying to force him . . . Here, look . . . (pp. :::)]
As avid as he is coercive, the narrator is relentlessly seeking to draw his
friend into a continuum of shared experience and response. And it is this
that the listener refuses with his Eh bien quoi, cest-un-dingue . . . [So
what, hes crazy . . .]. The denition that this retort brings has the eect
Abjection into art 6q
of turning him into a stranger in the eyes of the story-teller ( la place
o tait son ami, vient de surgir . . . cet inconnu, p. :: [in his friends
place there has suddenly appeared . . . this stranger (p. ::6)]). There are
striking similarities with the mother in Ton pre. Ta sur whose
invocation of categories made her an outsider to her own family. The
remainder of the text charts the various ways in which the listeners reac-
tion destroys the intersubjective intimacy between the two friends,
drying out the substances spongieuses, suintantes (pp. :::6) [those
spongy, oozing subtances (p. ::8)] of the narrators subject matter,
placing toutes les agitations et convulsions [all the agitations and con-
vulsions] of subjectivity rmly behind bars, and creating a strongroom
with [d]es parois garanties toute preuve, dune parfaite tanchit
(p. ::8:q) [walls guaranteed proof against all risks and totally impene-
trable (p. ::8:q)] as a defence against them. The text concludes with
the real narrators recognition that nothing prevents the real reader
from responding with the same kind of verdict.
In all these scenes of narration Nathalie Sarraute is more or less
explicitly presenting us with mises-en-abyme of her own project in such a
way as to underscore that projects own implication in the intersubjective
dynamic that it portrays. The erosion of the boundaries across which
subjectivity leaks and inltrates its other is not conned to the substance
of Sarrautes texts, but has thoroughly contaminated both the discourse
and the circumstances of its articulation. To speak of this kind of sub-
jectivity seems to entail participating in all its forms, and encountering
all the responses it habitually elicits on the part of those who come up
against it.
\n+
And yet there is more to Sarrautes work than the depiction and re-
enactment of a certain kind of experience. If she accepts the generic
classication roman which appears on the front cover of most of her
prose writing (Tropismes, LUsage de la parole, Enfance, Ici and Ouvrez are the
exceptions), rcit is a term she invokes far less readily than that of pome.
This word appears in the prires dinsrer or blurbs of both Les Fruits dor
and disent les imbciles to characterise the book in question. The inten-
tion seems to be less to contest the label roman on the cover, than to draw
attention to the aesthetic dimension of the work. This insistence on the
poetic character of her writing appears on a number of occasions in
interviews that Sarraute has given over the years. For example, in
o Dierence and human relations
conversation with Serge Fauchereau and Jean Ristat, she says: Pour
moi, le roman se rapproche, essaye de se rapprocher de la posie; il tend,
comme la posie, saisir au plus prs de leur source, des sensations,
quelque chose de ressenti. Les romans devraient devenir de grands
pomes. Et de mme certaines uvres potiques sont cres dans des
formes qui jusquici taient considres comme appartenant la prose
[For me, the novel is moving closer, or trying to move closer to poetry;
like poetry, it seeks to grasp sensations, something felt, as close as possi-
ble to its source. Novels should become large poems. And in the same
way, a number of poetic works are being created in forms which until
now were considered to belong to prose].
11
It is precisely by becoming
poetry that Sarrautes writing is able to transcend as well as to mime the
forms of abjection which it describes.
Being of, as well as beyond, the world she portrays, the aesthetic in
Sarraute neither counters nor contradicts its abject qualities, although
she does represent many misguided attempts carried out in the name of
art to do just this. The poems of Paul Valry (especially the later ones),
Flauberts Salammb,
12
the novel by Germaine Lemaire in Le Plantarium,
Les Fruits dor for some of its readers in Les Fruits dor, and Natachas
childhood attempts at writing in Enfance all bear the marks of this false
aesthetic. It is signalled by mention of characteristics implied by words
such as lisse, dur, achev, glac [smooth, hard, nished, frozen],
the very antithesis of the forms of subjectivity as Sarraute portrays it in
her ction. It is associated with calculation for eect (Valry), conscious
control (ditto), excessive polish (Flauberts style), in short, with an
absence of any sign of living contact with readers. One of the defend-
ers of this false aesthetic in Les Fruits dor praises the novel of the same
name for just these qualities:
Pure uvre dart cet objet referm sur lui-mme, plein, lisse et rond. Pas une
ssure, pas une raure par o un corps tranger pt sinltrer. Rien ne rompt
lunit des surfaces parfaitement polies dont toutes les parcelles scintillent,
claires par les faisceaux lumineux de la Beaut. (FO, p. .)
[A pure work of art this self-enclosed, solid object, so smooth and round. Not
a crack, not a scratch through which a foreign body could inltrate. Nothing to
break the smoothness of the perfectly polished surfaces, every particle of which
sparkles, shining in the lightbeams of Beauty. (p. .q)]
Another reader spells out the (false) aesthetic credo that lies behind such
preferences by contrasting them to the murky and abject forms of sub-
jectivity that are the stu of Sarrautes own ction:
Abjection into art :
Pas de grouillements de larves, de pataugeages dans je ne sais quels fonds
bourbeux qui dgagent des miasmes asphyxiants, dans je ne sais quelles vases
putrides o lon senlise. [. . .] Tout lart, je crois, pour un romancier, consiste
en cela, de slever au-dessus de ces grouillements nausabonds, au-dessus de
ces dcompositions, de ces processus obscurs, comme on les nomme . . . (p. .)
[No swarming larvae, no oundering about in God knows what miry swamps
that give o asphyxiating miasma, or in putrid ooze into which you sink. [. . .]
The whole art of the novelist, in my opinion, consists in that, in rising above
these noxious swarmings, above these decompositions, these obscure processes
as they are called. (pp. 8q)]
A novel, he concludes, should be like St Petersburg or Venice, a solid and
glorious construct wrested from the swamps, in short, an antithesis to
abjection and to the murky indistinctions that characterise experience
for the subjects of Sarrautes ction.
This view is very dierent from the response of the reader who
defends Les Fruits dor in terms which are quite the reverse of this clas-
sical purity and aesthetic distance. The test for him is experience rather
than awe or admiration: il me faut prouver . . . je ne sais pas ce que
cest . . . cest quelque chose comme ce quon sent devant la premire
herbe qui pousse sa tige timidement . . . [I need to sense . . . I dont quite
know what it is . . . its something like what you feel in the presence of
the rst blade of grass that timidly sends up a shoot . . .] It is something
that seizes hold of him in a particularly intimate form of contact: Cest
quelque chose qui me prend doucement et me tient sans me lcher
. . .[. . .], la main dun enfant qui se blottirait au creux de ma main [Its
something that takes me gently and holds me without letting me go . . .
[. . .] a childs hand nestling in the palm of my own]. And it inltrates
his entire being: chaque parcelle de moi en est imprgne (p. :)
[every particle of me is imbued with it (p. :8)]. Contact, intimacy,
inltration: these are the very terms of the subjects existence in
Sarraute; and we nd them repeated in all the representations of posi-
tive aesthetic experience in her work. But with the important dierence
that contact is freed of fear, threat or disgust, and seems equally exempt
from the possibility of betrayal. Like everything else in Sarraute, the aes-
thetic can be validated only by the experience of the subject. However,
although it is inscribed in the familiar forms of the subjects experience
of others, it constitutes a redemptive version of that experience by virtue
of the absence of the negative, dangerous qualities normally involved in
engagements with the other in her world.
The insistence on the porous quality of contact is to be found in all
. Dierence and human relations
the authentic encounters with works of art in Sarrautes writing and
indeed is precisely the index of their authenticity. The Portrait of the
Unknown Man in Portrait dun inconnu announces its presence to the nar-
rator like a pu of warm and acrid air above the entrance to a metro
station, an image that recalls the asphyxiating miasma decried by the
defenders of the false aesthetic in Les Fruits dor. Once the narrator nds
himself face-to-face with the painting, he is seized by the gaze of the
unknown man: son regard sempara de moi [his glance seized hold of
me], rather as Les Fruits dor takes hold of its authentic reader. And
the powerful appeal that the narrator senses coming from the gure in
the portrait produces an eect that completely dissolves the boundary
between them: je restais l devant lui, perdu, fondu en lui (p. 8:) [I
stood there before him, lost, dissolved in him (pp. 8)]. This proves to
be a mutual exchange of response which the narrator describes in terms
very characteristic of the permeable forms of intersubjective exchange
in Sarrautes world: cette rponse timide quil avait fait sourdre de moi,
pntrait en lui [this timid response he had awaked in me, penetrated
him]. The narrators reactions are elicited as seepage by the other of the
portrait; and in turn they penetrate the surface of that other in a two-
way trac that perfectly exemplies the porousness of their boundaries.
Like the portrait in Portrait dun inconnu, the sculpture in Vous les enten-
dez? is of uncertain outline and is lacking in clear form and denition:
possibly a puma, possibly a mythical beast, possibly a religious object,
elle ne ressemble rien (VLE, p. :) [its not like anything (p. )]. Its
importance lies in its eects rather than in any intrinsic quality it may
possess; and, as in the case of the portrait, these eects are repeatedly
described in terms of inltration, penetration, leaking boundaries: Ce
qui sort de l, ce qui mane, irradie, coule, les pntre, sinltre en eux
partout, ce qui les emplit, les gone, les soulve . . . (p. ::) [What comes
from it, what emanates, radiates, ows, penetrates them, percolates right
inside them, what lls them dilates them, uplifts them . . . (p. )]. The
stone beast bears all the signs of contamination, but it is of a strangely
puried contamination. In addition to the absence of danger and
betrayal which marks the aesthetic experience, there is in this case also
an absence of language. The exclusion of language from the aesthetic
experience seems to contribute signicantly to the non-degraded quality
of the blurring of boundaries between the art object and its viewers: ils
nont pas besoin de mots, ils nen veulent pas, ils savent quil faut surtout
ne laisser aucun mot sen approcher, y toucher [they have no need of
words, they dont want any, they know that above all no word should be
Abjection into art
allowed to come close to it, to touch it]. As with the faithful reader of
Les Fruits dor whose experience ends the novel, words are eschewed
because they get in the way of contact between the two. Paradoxically,
words are regarded here both as a genuinely degrading form of pollu-
tion and as an excessively policing form of boundary. As pollution,
words are described as mesquins, prcis, coquets, beaux, laids,
enjleurs, trompeurs, tyranniques, salissants, rducteurs, amplicateurs,
papoteurs, and nally, as dgradants [petty, precise, coy, beautiful,
ugly, cajoling, treacherous, tyrannical, sullying, reductive, inating,
gossipy, degrading]. And yet they are also presented as a particularly
rebarbative form of barrier: Ces mots dont elle [la bte] est entoure
sont comme des ls de fer barbels (p. ::o::) [The words with which
it [the animal] is surrounded are like barbed wire (pp. 8)]. Words,
then, both divide and degrade; whereas the work of art succeeds in con-
taminating without profaning.
However, language does not necessarily constitute an obstacle to the
intimacy and fusion which are the hallmarks of the aesthetic as well as
of the intersubjective experience. Everything depends on how it oper-
ates. Too much denition, and language profanes or disrupts the
exchange between art and its recipients. But when language constitutes
the actual stu of this exchange, then it need not impede the aesthetic
process. As the uid substance that ows back and forth without
recourse to dierentiation, it participates in the non-degrading inter-
subjective contamination between the living being that the art object
seems to become in these moments, and its human counterpart. For
instance, the words in a poem which a character in disent les imbciles is
moved to recite at one point, succeed in creating such a degree of con-
tinuum with their speaker that the very concepts of fusion and separa-
tion are themselves eroded:
Soudain des mots, une strophe, une seule, elle otte, se dploie, elle men-
veloppe, me pntre . . . une chaude bue . . . [. . .] Par toutes leurs voyelles,
leurs consonnes ils se tendent, souvrent, aspirent, simbibent, semplissent, se
gonent, spandent la mesure despaces innis, la mesure de bonheurs sans
bornes . . . [. . .] Il ny plus de moi, plus de lui, plus de sparations, plus de
fusions, il ny que leur balancement, leur vibration, leur respiration, leur batte-
ment . . . qui font vibrer et respirer une mme substance, battre au rythme dun
mme pouls une mme vie . . . (DLI, p. :o)
[Suddenly words, a stanza, just one, it oats, unfolds, envelopes me, penetrates
me . . . a warm vapour . . . [. . .] With all their vowels, their consonants, they
stretch, open up, breathe in, become saturated, ll up, swell, spread out over
Dierence and human relations
innite space, over boundless happinesses . . . [. . .] Theres no more me, no
more him; no more separations, no more fusions, there is only their swaying,
their vibration, their breathing, their heartbeat . . . causing us to vibrate and
breathe a single substance, to beat in time to a single pulse, a single life . . . (pp.
:o:.)]
Nothing resists the inltration of the words of the poem whose physical
elements (vowels and consonants) operate, independently of any
meaning, to transform everything into a single substance that vibrates
according to a single pulse. If Sarraute tends to use poetry more gener-
ally as a synonym for art, the material, auditory qualities mentioned
here as well as the allusion to a rhythm, suggest the means whereby
poetry might indeed be an eective means for turning dierence into
sameness and thus transcending the dierential basis of language.
13
Most of the explorations of the redemptive capacity of art in Nathalie
Sarraute focus on its reception: the work of art is redemptive for the
person who responds to it, such as the narrator to the painting in Portrait
dun inconnu, the authentic reader to Les Fruits dor in Les Fruits dor, the
father to the sculpture in Vous les entendez?, and so on. But the scenes of
creation staged in Entre la vie et la mort also present the emergence of
words in writing itself as bearing all the marks of the uid intimacy that
we have been examining here. The writer in this novel is depicted
towards the end of the book coaxing words out of his subject matter in
a manner that recalls very closely the intimate probing by which the nar-
rator of Portrait dun inconnu elicits the liquid grey matter of subjectivity
from Le Vieux and his daughter: palper encore et encore tout autour,
appuyer . . . jusqu ce quenn de l des mots commencent sourdre
. . . [palpate again and again all around it, press . . . until nally words
begin to well up out of it . . . ] Words seep out of the image the writer
is working on like tropisms out of a person: Voil . . . Des mots suintent
en une ne trane de gouttelettes tremblantes, se dposent sur le papier
. . . (EVM, p. :66) [There . . . Words are seeping in a ne stream of
trembling drops, and land on the paper . . .] And the novel closes as the
writer searches for signs of living, warm breath from his creation: est-ce
que cela se dgage, se dpose . . . comme sur les miroirs quon approche
de la bouche des mourants . . . une ne bue? (p. :) [is it exuding, set-
tling . . . as on the mirrors people hold in front of the mouths of the dying
. . . a ne vapour? (p. :8)] The noxious exhalations of intimacy are
redeemed in the form of the ne vapour exuded by authentically living
literary language, just as they were in the warm vapour of the poem in
disent les imbciles.
Abjection into art
The wager for the writer is to prevent words from reverting to the
dierential capacity which kills writing through the xity that denition
and distinction introduce into it. The work of art even the one which,
like Sarrautes is made of language achieves its aesthetic status by
avoiding closure and promoting maximum contact. The sign of this
contact is the works capacity to transform all elements into a single sub-
stance, to set up vibrations (a key word in these moments) to which every-
thing will respond. The aesthetic has a unique ability to transmute
dierence into sameness, and to draw artist, subject matter, linguistic (or
other) medium, and recipient into a continuum in which dierences
cease to exist. It is in this way that the poem succeeds in transcending
the limits of intersubjective relations while still subscribing to their
dynamic.
6 Dierence and human relations
r\n+ i i
The body and sexual dierence
cn\r+rn rotn
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism
When it comes to discussing the nature of the novel and ctional form,
Nathalie Sarraute seems to have two major tenets: the rst is that psy-
chology constitutes the essential subject matter of ction; and the
second, related, point is that character can no longer be the vehicle for
portraying this psychology. These two assumptions constitute the
cornerstone of the essays in Lre du soupon; and they are endlessly
repeated within the novels themselves, as their protagonists come up
against the reality of the tropism, and yet also nd themselves involved
in the business of characterisation through their dealings with others.
Character in the conventional sense of the word is no longer treated as
the means whereby human truths may be revealed to readers, but
instead becomes part of the armoury deployed in intersubjective rela-
tions. The concept of character is used as both weapon and defensive
strategy in the dramas that take place between the protagonists in
Sarrautes ction. For her largely anonymous subjects (or characters
with a small c) regularly engage in mutual attack and retaliation in
terms that are borrowed from an anachronistic characterological reper-
toire of personality traits. Thus father and daughter in Portrait dun
inconnu deploy the masks of the miser and the crank in their struggles
with each other; and Alain summarily despatches his mother-in-law by
describing her as an authoritarian personality. The inauthenticity of this
notion of character for Sarraute is demonstrated by this downgrading
of its former revelatory function in ction to that of a mere counter in
the hostile varieties of human relations.
In repudiating character as the vehicle for exploring psychological
truth, Sarraute is not just condemning an outworn ctional convention.
She is shifting the centre of gravity of the novels concerns: rejecting
physical manifestations of human existence in favour of the dis-
embodied inwardness of psychology, and renouncing individual
dierences for the universal sameness of the tropism. Disembodied
q
states of consciousness rather than esh and blood characters are the
main concern of her ction; and since her aim is exclusively to track the
elusive movements of the tropism as it darts along the frontiers of
consciousness, individual identities with their concomitant physical
dierences become totally irrelevant to her enterprise. At the level of the
tropism it does not matter whether a character has a lump on the end of
his nose (like Pre Grandets veiny wen ), is fair or dark, tall or short, thin
or fat even male or female (although this question perhaps deserves
separate consideration which will come later) because the focus of
attention is so inward. The psychological reality so tenaciously pursued
throughout all Sarrautes writing is taken to be present in all people: un
nouvel unanimisme, un fond commun, [. . .] qui, telles les gouttelettes
de mercure, tendent sans cesse, travers les enveloppes qui les sparent,
se rejoindre et se mler dans la masse commune (Dostoevski, pp. ,
my emphasis) [a new unanimism, a common source, [. . .] which like
little drops of mercury, continually tend to conglomerate and mingle in
a common mass through the casings that separate them (pp. 6)]. Any
acknowledgement of the physical characteristics that distinguish one
body from another would serve to re-erect the partitions that divide
character from character, and limit and undermine the enquiry into this
common mass of psychic existence.
In banishing the body from her ctional world, then, Sarraute is ban-
ishing its potential for marking dierence in order to concentrate on
what is the same in the human psyche. For bodies with their inevitable,
outward particularities stand in the way of inward and universal psycho-
logical truths. Yet in placing psychology at the centre of the novelistic
tradition (exemplied and inaugurated in French literature by La
Princesse de Clves),
1
Sarraute is assuming an inheritance (the roman psy-
chologique) in which a reading of the mind has proved inseparable from
a reading of the body. Madame de Clvess passion becomes legible
both to herself and to others only when she recognises, and they per-
ceive the bodys trouble, its blushes, its anxious glances, its speechlessness,
its helpless paralysis. The body repeatedly calls for interpretation,
2
and
it is only beyond and behind its physical surfaces that the interpreters
quarry psychology is to be found. When the mention of Nemourss
name to Madame de Clves causes an extreme physical embarras, this
response unambiguously reveals to M. de Clves that it is Nemours (and
not either of the other two possible suspects) who is the lover whose iden-
tity she did not wish to reveal.
3
Even in the age of classical pudeur, there-
8o The body and sexual dierence
fore, the body is central to the pyschological narrative, oering inter-
pretative access to the truths that lie within.
The centrality of the body to any hermeneutic enterprise can,
however, take two apparently contrasting forms. Succinctly put, it can
function either as the veil behind which lies the truth (as in the case of
Mme de Clves), or as the truth that lies behind the veil. These two alter-
native positions may be represented respectively by Roger Kempf (in his
book Le Corps romanesque) for whom the ctional body is always a text to
be deciphered (and his own readings demonstrate superbly with what
rich potential);
4
and by Peter Brooks who argues that the body is always
the ultimate focal object of the philosophers search after truth.
Developing Sartres notion of an Acteon complex in conjunction with
a reading of Freud, Brooks suggests that the seeker after truth is always
implicitly gendered as male, that his desire for knowledge has an
inescapably erotic investment, and that truth is positioned like a
womans body as the terminus ad quem of his epistemophilic strivings.
5
In
the rst scenario (Kempf) the body is all sign, and in the second, it serves
as transcendental signied.
6
Any discussion of the body will probably have to take account of
whether it is treating the body as sign or signied. In doing so it might
also wish to consider how far such a treatment draws the body into a
logic of vehicle and tenor (vehicle when the body is a sign, tenor when
it is the transcendental signied). What would follow from such a
consideration is the possibility that the body might never be more than
merely metaphorical, and so would undermine the relatedness to the
real that it has come to promise in contemporary thought. The
materialism of Brookss assimilation of the body to truth slides only
too easily into gure as it becomes impossible to say whether, in his
account, the body stands as gure for truth, or truth as a gure for
the body. This question of whether the status of the body is that of
ultimate reality, or that of metaphor or analogon, is one that is prob-
ably raised by all discussions of the topic; but at any rate it is an
inescapable part of Sarrautes use of the body and I shall be return-
ing to it below.
rsvcnoroov
The starting point for Sarrautes psychology
7
appears, however, to dis-
pense entirely with the duality of the interpretive schema that I have
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism 8:
described above. In her essay De Dostoevski Kafka she describes the
choice for the writer in the early :qos as one between the behaviourist
novel exemplied by Hemingway, and the roman psychologique
exemplied by Dostoevsky,
8
and, signicantly, she presents it in terms of
a choice between body and mind. In the behaviourist novel modern man
is a body without a soul, totally reducible to his surface appearance with
no inner beyond, and entirely at the mercy of the triple determinism of
hunger, sexuality and social class as described by Pavlov, Freud and
Marx. Whereas in the modern psychololgical novel which she is seeking
to rehabilitate in Lre du soupon, bodies are vaporised in order to reveal
complex and elusive incorporeal psychological states. In charting the
evolution of ctional character from Balzac to the present day, she notes
that he has lost not only the entire social, but also the material, basis for
his identity, including notably ses vtements, son corps, son visage
(Lre, p. 6:) [his clothes, his body, his face (p. 8)]. This is because les
personnages de roman modernes seront de plus en plus, non point tant
des types humains en chair et en os [. . .], que de simples supports, des
porteurs dtats parfois encore inexplors (Dostoevski, pp. )
[ctional characters were increasingly to become, not so much esh and
blood human types [. . .], as simple props, bearers of states of
consciousness that have sometimes still not been explored (pp. 6)]
(my emphasis).
The main reason why the modern novelist will decline to provide
characters with any physical existence (aspect physique, gestes, actions,
sensations, p. ) [physical aspect, gestures, actions, sensations (p. q.)],
is that these markers of individual dierence lend themselves too easily
to interpretation in terms of an over-familiar and consequently false
vraisemblable. In other words, by opting for the psychological novel,
Sarraute is making disembodiment the condition of the universal
psychological truth of her ction. This psychological truth is expressed
in terms of tropisms, the undenable movements on the borders of
consciousness. But these movements never operate in a vacuum; as I
have already argued (in Chapter .), they always take place in a relation
to an other. Their dramatic quality which Sarraute always insists upon
is an eect of the fact that there is always more than one person
involved: the indenable movements which she calls ces drames
intrieurs [. . .] ont tous ceci en commun, quils ne peuvent se passer de
partenaire (Conversation, pp. qq:oo) [these inner dramas [. . .] all
have one thing in common: they cannot do without a partner (p. :o6)].
Sarrautes psychology is a psychology not of an individual nor even of
8. The body and sexual dierence
a universal inner subject, but of an intersubjectivity where the indi-
vidual is always caught up in something more than himself, and where
universality has to be thought of as all the permutations that inter-
subjective relations are shown to be capable of taking.
9
It is here, in the
dimension of intersubjectivity, that the body of which her characters
had initially been stripped, makes its return in Sarraute.
In fact, it never quite departs, for in the vestigial survival of so-called
Balzacian characterisation in Portrait dun inconnu the father and his
daughter around whom all the dramas are concentrated, preserve frag-
ments of the body through which their Balzacian personality might once
have been read. The novel educates both its narrator and its readers into
dispensing with terms like selsh, tight-sted and crank, and tenta-
tively works its way towards the psychisme of the tropism. In the
process the body acquires an entirely dierent function. Its surviving
fragments, no longer required as an index of individual dierence or
character, are metamorphosed into highly sensitive transmitters and
receptors of intersubjective awareness:
Ce nest qu la sortie que japercevais tout coup, au moment o elle dis-
paraissait un tournant de lescalier, la ligne furtive de leur dos ou, dans une
glace, parmi la foule qui scoulait devant moi, leur nuque. Certains dtails, en
apparence insigniants, de leur aspect, de leur accoutrement maccrochent tout
de suite, magrippent un coup de harpon qui enfonce et tire. (PI, p. :)
[It was only on the way out that suddenly, just as she disappeared round a turn
on the stairs, I would catch sight of the furtive outline of their backs or, reected
in a mirror, among the crowd streaming in front of me, the nape of their necks.
Certain seemingly insignicant details of their appearance, of their general get-
up, catch me immediately and seize hold of me like a harpoon that strikes
deep and pulls. (p. .)]
Father and daughter share indistinguishable physical characteristics
(their backs, the nape of their necks) which not only signal the existence
of inner dramas to the chance observer, but also, through their har-
pooning eect, draw the narrator into a further drama as partner in his
own right. The body is never reconstituted to form a totality (the body
of a miser, the body of a crank), and it exists as fragment because it is
only through the morselised parts of the body that subjects become
aware of the presence of the other:
Elle aussi a ce mme air surnaturel des choses. Elle sent cela: elle me sent dans
son dos, et dans son dos aussi, srement, mon regard dans la glace, quand je suis
la sortie dun spectacle dans la foule. (p. :, my emphasis)
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism 8
[She also has this same supernatural sense of things. She can feel it: she senses me
in her back, and its certain that its in her back that she senses my glance in the
mirror as I leave the theatre in the crowd. (p. .)]
The fragmented body (here the back) is directly registering the existence
of intersubjective relations not as a surface in which they might be
deciphered, but as a direct physical response.
10
The morselisation of the body is carried so far that the dramas
between subject and subject tend to become dramas between quasi-
autonomous anatomical entities. Bulging eyes, raised ngers, bare necks,
pendulous cheeks, bulbous lips, pot-bellies, (parts of the body many of
which very graphically reach out towards the other as protrusion of
some form or another) are instinctively interpreted by Sarrautes sub-
jects as attributes of the other that signify an intersubjective relation, be
it as threat or as debilitating vulnerability. The subject himself experi-
ences his own body as an arbitrary collection of disparate physical attrib-
utes that are constantly falling captive to forces outside his own person
and hence of his own control. As one of the characters in disent les imb-
ciles discovers, every movement of every part of his body proves to be
subject to inuences which he is powerless to resist:
Ce qui vient darriver, ce mouvement malheureux de mes yeux qui se sont
abaisss, de mes doigts qui se sont joints et ont donn un petit coup sur ma
manche, bien sr, ctaient mes yeux, ctaient mes doigts, mais cest ce qui sap-
pelle un geste machinal. (DLI, p. 8o)
[What just happened, that unfortunate movement of the eyes which glanced
down, of the ngers which closed and lightly tapped my sleeve, of course they
were my eyes and my ngers, but it was whats called a mechanical gesture. (p.
)]
And he concludes ruefully, in a way that summarises much of the bodily
experience of Sarrautes characters: le corps ragit ainsi parfois avec
une dplorable indpendance . . . (p. 8o) [the body reacts like that some-
times with deplorable independence (p. )].
In a more exteme version of this, the viscous, leaky quality of sub-
jectivity makes the body (particularly in the early novels) permanently
prey to encounters with the other in ways that the subject is similarly
unable to master.
11
The body oozes of its own accord, betraying its inter-
subjective awareness against the will and the wishes of its subject. It is
voided under attack, direct or insidious, from without: elle draine toutes
ses forces, elle le vide . . . il lui semble, tandis quil est couch l, immo-
8 The body and sexual dierence
bile, que son sang scoule de lui petit petit, aspir par elle (P.:, p. ::8)
[she drains o all his strength, emptying him of all substance . . . as he
lies there motionless, he feels as if his blood is gradually owing out of
him, being sucked in by her (pp. :.)]. Equally, it is the body of the
other which secretes the substances that contaminate the subject with
unwanted contact:
quelque chose dinsaisissable sort deux, un mince l tnu, collant, de petites
ventouses, dlicates comme celles qui se tendent, frmissantes, au bout des poils
qui tapissent certaines plantes carnivores, ou bien un suc poisseux comme la
soie que scrte la chenille; quelque chose dindnissable, de mystrieux, qui
saccroche au visage de lautre et le tire ou qui se rpand sur lui comme un
enduit gluant sous lequel il se ptrie. (p. 6o)
[something intangible emanates from them, a ne, tenuous, sticky thread, deli-
cate little suckers like the ones that stretch out, quivering, on the tips of the hairs
that line carnivorous plants; or else a sticky juice like the silk secreted by cater-
pillars: something indenable and mysterious that adheres to the other persons
face and pulls it, or which spreads over it like a gluey coating, beneath which it
turns to stone. (pp. 6.)]
It is through his body, or more precisely, through his bodily attributes,
that the subject is engaged by the other in dramatic encounter; and he
is helpless to do anything but stand by and let it happen.
This remains so even when Sarraute abandons the mode of Sartrean
disgust as a means of representing the phenomenon. The power of the
other to determine how the subject perceives himself is one that makes
the body the focus of his control, as Germaine Lemaire discovers in an
unexpected encounter with Alains father in Le Plantarium:
Elle stait sentie soudain expose, rosissant, frissonnant sous ce regard do
coulait sur elle et la recouvrait [. . .] un dgot damateur dlicat pour une
femme . . . mais elle navait pas lair dune femme, elle tait quelque chose din-
forme, dinnommable, un monstre areux, toute dcoie. (P, pp. :6)
[She had suddenly felt herself exposed, blushing, trembling before this gaze
from which there poured over her, covering her, [. . .] the distaste for a woman
of a fastidious connoisseur . . . but she didnt look like a woman, she was some-
thing shapeless, unnameable, a frightful monster, her hair all dishevelled. (p.
:qo)]
The mans gaze not only provokes uncontrolled shivers and blushing, but
it also imposes a shapeless monster on a subject who, in so far as she
assumed anything about herself, assumed she had the physical appear-
ance of a woman. This happens over and over again in Sarrautes
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism 8
writing as characters are constantly obliged to negotiate with an image
of themselves that lies in the hands of the other; and it is an image that
is always seen as having its basis in the body.
In confronting this image the subject is also confronting his own
mortality, because the other can not only make a monster out of a
woman: he can also in the same process turn a live body into a dead one.
As long as the body operates in parts, and is comprised of autonomous
eyes, lips or ooze, there is life, despite the disgust and the pain that arise
in the consequent engagement with the other. But the most awesome
power that subjects have over one another is far worse than their ability
to puncture the surface of the body and manipulate its separate parts: it
lies in their ability to construct a body that is a whole. For it is when the
body becomes whole, that it becomes intelligible in terms of the vraisem-
blable; and it is this vraisemblance that deals the most mortal of blows as
living beings are turned into lifeless cardboard characters. This happens
for instance when Alain Guimier presents his young wife Gisle with a
thumbnail character sketch of his mother-in-law as an authoritarian
personality. He is skilled in the traditional art of characterisation (Il
tait si drle quand il saisissait les gens, les tenait dans le creux de sa main,
les lui montrait, quand il les dessinait dun trait si juste, si vif, il savait les
rendre si ressemblants, il les imitait si bien (P, p. q) [He was so funny
when he took hold of people, held themin the palmof his hand, showed
themto her, when he sketched themwith such accurate, vivid strokes, he
knew how to get such a good likeness, he imitated themso well (p. 6q)]),
and this completely changes Gisles sense of what her mother is:
elle avait vu sa mre, jusque-l comme elle-mme incernable, innie, projete
brusquement distance, se ptrier tout coup en une forme inconnue aux
contours trs prcis. (p. q)
[she had seen her mother, who, until then, like herself had been uncircumscrib-
able, innite, abruptly projected at a distance, suddenly petried in an unfa-
miliar form with very precise contours. (p. 6q)]
Distance and coherent outline always have this petrifying eect in
Sarraute. And it is this that spells death to the person who falls victim to
the supposedly lifelike characterisations that produce whole and intel-
ligible beings: they become indistinguishable from the lifeless waxwork
egies that Germaine Lemaire constructs in the novels that she writes.
12
In its various phases and manifestations, then, the intersubjective psy-
chology of Sarrautes ction always makes the body central. A certain
use of the body where it is sign of some individual sentiment in the
86 The body and sexual dierence
traditional moulds of the psychological and Balzacian novel has gone,
or at least survives only as the deadly strategy of characterisation in the
inner dramas that form the action. But it is nevertheless through the
body that the action is worked out. Why this should be after Sarrautes
determined expunging of the body from the modern psychological
novel remains to be explained. It could be argued that intersubjective
relations and especially the sort which involve the particular forms of
power and dependency that Sarraute explores nd in the body a vital
arena for the working out of their dramas.
13
The phrase corps corps
[hand to hand, lit. body to body] which Sarraute uses on more than one
occasion to describe the encounters that are depicted in her texts now
seems peculiarly apposite. So too does the notion of a corps conducteur
[conducting rod, lit. conducting body] which is how the narrator in
Portrait dun inconnu refers to his own sensitivity to the tropistic encounters
that take place between people.
14
Every aspect of human relations in
Sarraute is lived as event, and the body is conjured back into being in
order to underscore the fact that human relations are experienced only
and always as dramatic engagement, as interaction, as encounter.
nrrnrsrx+\+i ox
Arising out of all this is the question of where the body stands in rela-
tion to truth and the mode of its realities in the text. As the above exam-
ples will have suggested, the bodys presence in the Sarrautean text is
partly (or sometimes) real, and partly (or sometimes) metaphorical. To
return to the rst example from Portrait dun inconnu: the backs and the
necks of the old man and his daughter exist as realities in the physical
world of the novel, whereas the harpooning of the narrator is meta-
phorical. It will therefore be necessary to consider both how far the body
is really present in Sarraute, and then, when it is not really present,
why the metaphorical dimension of the text should invest so heavily in
it.
As far as the bodys real presence in the text is concerned, it seems
to function chiey as a cue to alert the subject to the otherwise invis-
ible existence of inward psychological dramas. Its role here reinforces
the tendency of the Sarrautean body always to be seen in action, since
its bodily parts provide the support for a narrative of interaction;
bodies never feature as the reposeful objects of contemplation or
description.
15
Words and gestures may provide a protective screen, but
at the same time they also point to the existence of something that lies
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism 8
behind or beyond: Derrire lcran protecteur des gestes, des mots . . .
(FO, p. .q, my emphasis) [Behind the protective screen of gestures, of
words . . . (p. .6)]. So when a character avance des lvres gourman-
des [thrusts out his greedy lips], when ses mains impies se tendent
[holds out his impious hands], when Il se renverse en arrire, croise
les mains sur son ventre [l]oeil x devant lui (pp. :.) [He leans
back, folds his hands over his belly, [h]is eyes staring ahead of him (p.
8)], all these gestures alert his partner to the fact that the words the
man goes on to utter, however innocuous at face value, constitute a
crushing display of authority. The focus on the bodys disparate parts
and their associated gestures goad the observer into interpretation,
shifting his attention onto the tropistic movements in which the bodys
actions originate.
At the same time, the interpretive movement that goes from gesture
to psychisme is always to some extent speculative, and this involves the
body in another role. For the narrators of Portrait dun inconnu and
Martereau this speculation concerns the very existence of the tropism: are
they just imagining what they think they sense, or do these elusive move-
ments really exist? Although there is much less doubt in the later novels
about the underlying nature of intersubjective relations, there still
remains, as I have already suggested (see above, Chapter .), endless
uncertainty for the characters about where the other is, and what the
nature of the relation is at any given point. It is this anguished curiosity
that provides the motor force of the drama, and it is one that frequently
drafts in support from the body in the hopes of resolving the uncertainty.
Moreover, the body is shown to have its own capacity for cognition, and
to have access to truths that the restless conjectures of the mind on their
own are denied. The body registers the tropism more directly than any-
thing else and so provides more incontrovertibly than anything else a
guarantee of the existence of Sarrautes elusive quarry. This is Gisles
experience in Le Plantarium:
Cest de l quelle vient, cette sensation de faiblesse dans les jambes, cette peur
quelle prouve de nouveau maintenant le corps ne se trompe jamais: avant la con-
science il enregistre, il amplie, il rassemble et rvle au-dehors avec une
implacable brutalit des multitudes dimpressions inmes, insaississables,
parses. (P, pp. 6., my emphasis)
[Thats where it comes from, this sensation of weakness in the legs, this fear
which she feels again now the body is never wrong: before the conscious mind, it
registers, amplies, assembles, and with relentless brutality reveals to the outside
world a multitude of tiny, elusive, scattered impressions. (p. )]
88 The body and sexual dierence
In this scenario the body is not merely the vehicle for a truth that lies
beyond it; it is entirely coextensive with that truth.
There is a third version of the bodys presence in the text in which it
is both metaphor and truth, and this is to be found in the interpretive
commentary (the so-called sous-conversation) that elucidates the inter-
subjective action. Time and again in her critical writings Sarraute asserts
that her writing is an exploration of an unknown eld, [des] tats parfois
inexplors [states of consciousness that have sometimes remained
unexplored]. She presents her psychisme as something entirely new,
and thus as something that by denition will be totally unfamiliar to her
readers at the level of conscious knowledge. The aim of the true realist
writer according to her interpretation of the term, is to go beyond the
familiar in search of the unknown:
il sacharne dbarrasser ce quil observe de toute la gangue dides prconues
et dimages toutes faites qui lenveloppent, de toute cette ralit de surface que
tout le monde peroit sans eort et dont chacun se sert, faute de mieux, et il
arrive parfois atteindre quelque chose dencore inconnu et quil lui semble tre
le premier voir. (Ce que voient, p. :8).
[he works tirelessly to rid the things he observes of the matrix of preconceived
ideas and ready-made images that encase them, as also of all the surface reality
that everyone can easily see and which, for want of anything better, everyone
uses; and occasionally he succeeds in reaching something that is thus far
unknown and which it seems to him that he is the rst to see. (p. :.8)]
The problemin writing is thus howto make the unfamiliar intelligible to
the reader without falsifying it and reducing it to the forms of the already
known, the vraisemblable. Here simile, analogy and metaphor proliferate,
as the unknown in the sphere of the psychological is compared to the
known in a variety of familiar but very dierent spheres: the everyday
(salt being used to soak up spilt wine, EVM, pp. qo [p. ]), popular
culture (nding bodies strung up in a tree by Red Indian marauders, P,
p.:6 [p. .o]), common experience (nightmares where you nd yourself
unable to make a sound, FO, p. : [p. 6]). In this sustained invocation
of shared experience one of the most powerful and most frequently
adopted forms that it takes is an appeal to the shared experience of the
body. For example, the childs word-game in Entre la vie et la mort is com-
pared to a whole range of compulsive physical behaviour, some of which
everybody may be presumed to have experienced at some time:
il ne peut plus les arrter . . . cest comme se ronger les ongles, extraire les cra-
pauds de son nez, sucer son pouce . . . comme les dmangeaisons que provo-
quent les ruptions, lagitation monotone que donne la vre. (EVM, p. .)
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism 8q
[he can no longer stop them . . . its like biting your nails, picking your nose,
sucking your thumb . . . like the itching caused by eruptions, the monotonous
restlessness that fever gives. (p. :q)]
Here the reader is very clearly being invited to make sense of the psycho-
logical unknown by means of a comparison with the physical known.
Some of the most compelling images in Sarraute, however, come not
from an appeal to the common experiences of the body, but from depic-
tions of the body in extremis where the experience is not one that most
people have shared: being rounded up and handcued, shot at point-
blank range, having a stomach pump inserted, the list (picked here at
random from Les Fruits dor) could go on. The extremity of what the body
is subjected to in these cases (and they almost always involve some kind
of violence) provokes in the reader an identication with the situations
that are being evoked in the text, even if those situations are ultimately
psychological and non-physical. The gut response of the reader is being
pressed into service to vouch for the truth of what is taking place in the
minds of the characters in the novel.
It was Sartre who rst drew attention to the centrality of the lieu
commun [commonplace] in Sarraute, by which he meant les penses les
plus rebattues [the most hackneyed thoughts] that provide the meeting
place for human exchange.
16
But of all the lieux communs in Sarrautes
ction perhaps that of the body is even more vital than that of language:
for while the characters may meet and act through an exchange of
hackneyed thoughts, readers are incited to engage with the text and
receive what it has to communicate at the level of the common-place of
the body. The purpose of writing for Sarraute is to faire revivre au
lecteur, mesure quelles se droulent, [l]es actions souterraines
(Conversation, p. qq) [make the reader relive these subterranean
actions as they unfold (p. :o6)]; and the eect is achieved through the
deployment of metaphors of the body that are designed to work very
directly on the body through an appeal to common experience. This
makes the readers encounter with the text primarily a physical one: a
rhetoric of the body addressed to a body with the aim of persuading the
reader of a certain truth about the mind.
Once again Sarrautes materialism emerges out of an emphasis on
event, not just in her psychology of interaction, but in her manner of
representing that psychology to the reader. The sense that something
very real is happening in the interactions that take place between the
characters seems to call up the human body as an index of that reality.
The intensity in Sarraute of what Elaine Scarry has noted more gener-
qo The body and sexual dierence
ally as a renewed desire to reconnect language to the material world
means that this desire is bound to have recourse not just to this or that
piece of material ground but to the most extreme locus of materialisa-
tion, the live body.
17
Physical experience is treated as a universal
through which the reader is incited to acknowledge her own implication
in the world being evoked, thus minimising the possibility of her dis-
missing it as unique and aberrant with a formula such as: Eh bien quoi,
cest un dingue . . . [So what, hes crazy . . .] The bodys re-entry into
Sarrautes world as the ground of a shared experience becomes the
means whereby her texts can be saved from the readerly judgements that
dismiss them as dierent. And the universality claimed for her psychic
truths is underpinned by her insistence on the sameness of physical
incarnation.
vni +i xo
With this mention of rhetoric in connection with the body, a third area
of Sarrautes ction emerges as an aspect of the role of the body in her
texts, namely writing itself. As we have seen, the body is central both to
the intersubjective relations of which her psychology (or psychisme)
consists, and to the representation of that psychology as true. But the
body is equally vital to the writing through which that representation is
mediated; and perhaps its most fundamental role is, tellingly, to disarm
any tendency to characterise the writing in terms of the rhetoric that I
have just invoked. Intersubjective relations in Sarraute involve language
in much more than merely providing what Sartre called the lieu de ren-
contre de la communaut [meeting place for the community]. For
words serve less as a neutral terrain on which psychological interaction
takes place, than as autonomous entities within that interaction. The
drama of Sarrautes writing turns to a large extent on the use of words,
and in particular, on the way in which words are so often depicted as
constituting the most lethal form of ammunition. As I have already sug-
gested (see above, Chapter ), what gives them this dangerous power is
above all their ability to work directly upon the body of their addressee:
un mot quelconque, tout fait banal, a transport cela, un mot a pntr en lui,
sest ouvert et a rpandu cela partout, il en est imbib, cela circule dans ses
veines, charri par son sang, des caillots se forment, des engorgements, des
poches, des tumeurs qui enent, psent, tirent . . . Et avec lobstination des
maniaques il cherche dcouvrir do viennent les lancements, il palpe les
endroits douloureux pour trouver leur place exacte, dlimiter leurs contours . . .
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism q:
cela ene toujours plus, cela appuie, il a besoin dtre soulag, il lui faudrait des
soins immdiats, une incision, une ponction, une saigne. (EVM, p. :)
[it was transported by a perfectly commonplace, ordinary word, a word got
inside him, opened up and spilled it all over everywhere, he is soaked in it, it is
circulating in his veins, carried along by his blood, clots form, obstructions,
haematomas, tumours which swell, press and pull . . . And with the obstinacy
of a fanatic, he tries to nd out where the pains are coming from, he palpates
the sore spots to see exactly where they are, to dene their outline . . . the
swelling continues, it presses, he must obtain relief, he should have immediate
care, it should be lanced, tapped, bled . . . (p. )]
Words have a capacity to enter the body of those to whom they are
addressed where they create pain, pourriture and various other usually
more or less pathological forms of physical response.
Indeed, the experience of language in Sarraute is almost always
represented as a physical experience, and this is true not just at the level
of the psychological and the intersubjective, but more importantly
perhaps, at the level of the aesthetic. Art of any kind (not just writing) is
always tested in Sarraute by its ability to elicit physical response within
its viewer or reader.
18
She knows that Valrys work is over-rated when
on opening the poems she catches an unmistakeable whi of cette vieille
odeur aigrelette de chion humide et de craie, cette vieille odeur ras-
surante et familire dencre et de poussire qui otte autour des souve-
nirs dexercices et deorts scolaires (PV, p. :.) [that old, sour smell
of damp cloths and chalk, that old, comforting, familiar smell of ink and
dust which hovers around memories of schoolroom exercises and exer-
tions]. Conversely, the lone gure left at the end of Les Fruits dor still
believing that the book is good bases his conviction on the very dierent
but equally physical response he has to its prose: Cela aue vers moi,
se rpand . . . Quelque chose me parcourt . . . cest comme une vibra-
tion, une modulation, un rythme (FO, p. :6) [It ows towards me,
spreads . . . Something runs through me . . . Its like a vibration, a
modulation, a rhythm (p. :.)]. The body is as accurate an indicator of
authentic art as it was of the existence of the tropism; and Gisles claim
that the body is never wrong applies as much to the realm of the aes-
thetic as to that of the interior dramas of the tropism. The appeal to the
body here is being deployed as a means of excluding the possibility of
even considering its use as a rhetorical strategy. Or more precisely, it is
being used to establish a distinction between a rhetoric that is merely aes-
thetic (Valry) and a writing that is more than aesthetic, that is to say,
authentic (Les Fruits dOr).
q. The body and sexual dierence
All the emphasis in the discussion so far has been on the role of the
body in the reception of words and writing. But it also has a vital (if less
extensively represented) role in the origins of writing. Writing for
Sarraute is always the writing of sensation: Le langage nest essentiel
que sil exprime une sensation [Essential language only exists if it
expresses a sensation].
19
The relationship of language to sensation is
explored in Entre la vie et la mort through contrasting metaphors in which
the object of the writing the sensation is conceived of as a body.
Either it secretes words out of its own being under the gentle pressure of
the writers hand, or it is fatally constricted and eaced as the writer
primps and decks it out in language of a grand couturier style imposed from
without:
il a essay de la dresser, de lui apprendre les bonnes faons, il la oblige sur-
veiller sa ligne, se faire toute mince pour bien porter ces modles de grand
couturier, ces phrases quavec tant de soins, deorts il a dessines, sobrement
lgantes ou savamment dsordonnes, ou broches et chamarres de mots
somptueux . . . il lui a appris, lui aussi, comme tant dautres, seacer pour
mieux les prsenter, les mettre en valeur, et [. . .] elle doit avoir ni par acqurir
la grce anonyme et grle, la dsinvolture applique des mannequins . . . (pp.
:).
[he had tried to train her, to teach her good manners, he had made her watch
her gure, become very slender so as to look good in the models of the big dress
designers, in these sentences which he constructed with such care, such eort,
soberly elegant or skilfully disordered, or brocaded and embroidered with
sumptuous words . . . he also taught her, like so many others, to be self-eacing
the better to present them, to set them o, and [. . .] she must have ended up by
acquiring the anonymous frail grace, the studiedly carefree style of fashion
models . . . (p. :6.)]
At any event it is the living body which becomes the index of the viabil-
ity of the writing, since only authentic language can avoid destroying its
object and allow it to survive and make contact with the reader.
20
The
body, in short, forms the basis of the writing which is simultaneously
making it the focus of the intersubjective relations that it depicts, and
appealing to it as guarantor of the truth of that representation.
But if the body is so pervasively present in Sarraute, if its manifesta-
tions are so numerous, does it betray any marks of sexual dierence? Is
gender as extraneous as hair-colouring or height to the modes of exis-
tence of the body in her writing? I shall be discussing the question of
gender in more detail in the next chapter, but in the meantime it has
crucial implications for the way Sarraute understands the role of the
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism q
body in writing. For unlike many younger women writers in France, and
against the grain of much of the feminist theory and commentary that
goes with them, Sarraute is deeply opposed not only to the assertion of
sexual dierence, but to grounding that assertion in physical dierence.
Nothing could be more inimical to Sarraute than the project of a writer
like Hlne Cixous who is explicitly searching for a writing that inscribes
femininity, and who sees the way towards it going via the female body.
This forms the rallying cry of her essay The Laugh of the Medusa:
Write yourself. Your body must be heard. [. . .] Women must write
through their bodies.
21
And while Luce Irigaray may have a more judi-
cious and complex argument, the female body is still the key point of
reference in her attempt to challenge masculine forms of representation
and thinking including masculinist forms of dierential thinking.
22
By contrast, while Sarraute also makes the body a central point of
reference in her work, it is a strikingly ungendered body. Very few of the
many physical features in Sarrautes novels carry marks of gender; this
is in part because the context of the interactions between the characters
is neither physical nor sexual, and the world of the sous-conversation is
violent rather than erotic. The potential for recognising gender is also
lessened by the fact that, as Gatan Brulotte points out, bodies in
Sarraute are overinvested in their upper half (face, hands, shoulders,
etc.).
23
She also claims to base her choice of il and elle on considera-
tions of variety and euphony alone, and in addition, given her view that
in contrast to elle, il is unmarked,
24
the choice of the masculine
pronoun could in itself be seen as a further denial of gender. And nally,
scenes of violence tend culturally to imply male participants, so that
masculinity would be simply a by-product of the image repertoire she
has chosen as a means of exploring the underside of human relations.
The apparent exclusion of gender from the agenda of the novels,
however, perhaps has as its ultimate cause the relationship of the body
to writing. It may seem hugely paradoxical to say so, but Sarrautes
writing may after all be best described as a writing of the body, even
though the logic of that writing makes gender irrelevant to a phrase that
has become a leitmotif in feminist theory. While not ruling out the
possibility that Sarrautes writing of the body could ultimately be
recuperated for feminist theory, in Sarrautes own terms the body that
writes has no gender: lintrieur, o je suis, le sexe nexiste pas
[Inside, where I am, sex does not exist].
25
It is possible for her to make
this claim because for her, gender is essentially a secondary physical
characteristic, and more precisely a characteristic that is visible only in
q The body and sexual dierence
the body as social construct which is to say as a whole construct. She
sees gender dierences primarily in terms of social roles that are either
imposed on the subject by the other, or, as is more frequently the case in
her work, adopted by subjects who are anxious to come over as a char-
acter in their intersubjective encounters. There is, for example, the nar-
rators aunt in the opening scene in Martereau who parades herself before
him as the spoiled but irresistible young wife in a style that is also heavily
dependent on stereotypical feminine mannerisms (cet air minaudeur et
faussement innocent que prennent certaines llettes prcoces qui font
lenfant (M, p. :o) [that simpering, falsely innocent manner that certain
precocious little girls assume when they want to play the baby (p. )]).
Or there is the young widow standing at her husbands graveside whose
pregnant belly is a little more prominent that it needs to be, in order that
she may appear precisely as the bereaved young mother-to-be (DLI, pp.
q6 [pp. q.]). For gender to become a part of writing it would require
the writer to see herself inauthentically as one of these stereotyped
images, as a traditional character with the full panoply of physical and
social characteristics that is to say, in the very terms which the writing
negates. The writing subject has to dispense with these images for her
work to acquire authenticity: je nexiste pas, au sens propre du mot, au
moment o je travaille [. . .]. Je ne pense pas que cest une femme qui
crit [I do not exist in the strict sense of the word, in the moment when
I am working [. . .]. I dont think this is a woman writing] (Qui tes-vous?,
p. :o). As Sarraute sees it, if she were to write as a women it would mean
picturing herself writing as a woman and posturing in a female role just
like the narrators aunt or the young widow at the graveside. To gender
her writing would be to lose everything that the bodys presence in the
text is designed to guarantee: the truth of what she is representing, and
the authenticity with which she is saying it.
Minds, bodies and the new unanimism q
cn\r+rn ri \r
Sexual indierence
Quand jcris, je ne suis ni homme ni femme ni chien ni chat . . .
[When I write I am neither man nor woman nor dog nor cat]
Nathalie Sarraute
1
voxrx, ntx\x nri xos \xn vni +i xo
If Sarrautes conception of the body succeeds in eliminating gender
from the physiology of writing, it would seem that sexual dierence nev-
ertheless returns in the intersubjective relations that are portrayed in her
work. However insistently she may assert that sexual dierences do not
count either at the level of the tropism or at the level of writing they
repeatedly intrude both in the assumptions that characters make about
each other, and in the assumptions that readers make about Sarraute. In
short, it is the presence of the other which reintroduces gender onto the
agenda of the novel. Sexual dierence in Sarraute would seem, then, to
be the result of social existence, and above all, of the fact that the subject
is seen by her other (I say she here, since gender is far more strongly
marked in relation to women than to men). Social existence is mediated
by the visual as much as it is by convention and stereotype. And when
these two factors the visual and the stereotypical operate in tandem,
the eects can turn out to be deadly for the Sarrautean subject.
In exploring this intrusion of gender as a function of social relations
and their visual currency, I shall begin with the example of photogra-
phy. In :qq Nathalie Sarraute was described by an interviewer as not
the sort of writer one would think of photographing in her bath,
2
a
comment which makes a brief allusion to her sex only to dismiss the
topic from the more unworldly concerns of her writing. This was the era
of the nouveau roman, and the most publicised photograph taken of
Nathalie Sarraute in :qq was one which depicted her standing outside
the ditions de Minuit, anked by Claude Ollier and Samuel Beckett,
q6
and in the company of her fellow New Novelists, Alain Robbe-Grillet,
Claude Simon, Claude Mauriac, Robert Pinget, and their publisher
Jrme Lindon. To be a woman in this group of men may have been to
be an exception to the rule of men, but it was one that went largely unre-
marked in those terms. It did, however, aord her some indulgence. One
version of the photograph shows her standing with her ankles crossed,
and another with her feet apart. According to Alain Robbe-Grillet
Sarraute asked to have the original version of the photograph (where she
is standing with her ankles crossed) altered to portray her with her feet
apart. In his account of the event, Sarraute was on medication which
had made her cheeks swell. Standing next to the gaunt gure of Samuel
Beckett she had inadvertently crossed her legs in attempt to give herself
a leaner look. In other words, her desire not to stand out from the crowd
because of her appearance had prompted her to perform what is
regarded as a typically female gesture (crossing her ankles) and she
demanded the female privilege of having the photograph altered. It is
tempting to assume that only Sarrautes position as a woman could have
allowed her this touch of vanity, even though the message sent by the
(altered) photograph itself occludes any gendering of Sarrautes status
in the group.
3
It was only in the late :qos and :q8os when the nouveau roman was on
the wane as a collective phenomenon, and criture fminine was on the
ascendant, that the issue of Nathalie Sarraute as a woman writer
emerged into the critical arena. And when it did, it was little less than
anathema to Sarraute who, as we have seen, always resolutely ignores
questions of sexual dierence in writing: Cest une grave erreur, surtout
pour les femmes, que de parler dcriture fminine ou masculine, she
warns. Il ny a que des critures tout court [It is a serious mistake, espe-
cially for women, to talk about womens writing [criture fminine] or mens
writing. There are just writings, period].
4
In attempting to understand
the implications of this remark and the attitudes that lie behind it, we
should perhaps begin by recognising the nature of Sarrautes attitude
towards feminism. First, although she regularly describes herself as a
feminist, she has always asserted that these are political views which as
such have no place in her literary writing.
5
And second, the demand for
equal recognition written into her rejection of criture fminine could be
seen as characteristic of a feminist politics which were bred in the :qos
when the issue was not as it has come to be since the :q8os the asser-
tion of female dierence, but equal surage, a cause which Sarraute
herself actively campaigned in support of. (French women were not
Sexual indierence q
granted the vote until :q.) The daughter of a man who believed that
women avaient dans le cerveau quelque chose qui rduisait leur intelli-
gence [had something in their brains which reduced their intelli-
gence],
6
and acutely aware of the dierences in the educational
ambitions and opportunities for the boys as compared to the girls of her
generation,
7
Nathalie Sarraute would seem to have good reason to share
the broad assumptions and egalitarian aspirations of Simone de
Beauvoir, just eight years her junior.
For women of this generation, feminism did not mean the demand for
positive recognition of their dierence, but, on the contrary, a crusade
for acknowledgement of the sameness of the two sexes. Sarraute shares
Beauvoirs belief that On ne nat pas femme: on le devient [One is not
born a woman: one becomes a woman],
8
and, as we saw in the previ-
ous chapter, she regards femininity primarily as a social construct. Like
Beauvoir too, she views work and its concomitant economic inde-
pendence as the path to freedom for women. But most of all, Sarraute
and Beauvoir concur in the conviction that the invention of womanhood
alienates women from their status as human beings. In Beauvoirs words:
Le fait dtre une femme pose aujourdhui un tre humain des prob-
lmes singuliers [The fact of being a woman currently poses peculiar
problems for a human being]. For men, by contrast, masculinity and
humanity are virtually synonymous:
Le privilge que lhomme dtient et qui se fait sentir ds son enfance, cest que
sa vocation dtre humain, ne contrarie pas sa destine de mle. (p. )
[The advantage that man enjoys, which makes itself felt from his childhood, is
that his vocation as a human being in no way runs counter to his destiny. (p.
6)]
Beauvoir is chiey preoccupied with the resulting impossibility for
women of reconciling work and erotic fullment. And although
Sarraute eschews both the social and the sexual as topics of literary
concern, her discussion of the perception of gender, particularly in the
theatre, makes some very similar points to Beauvoirs. For Sarraute, it is
impossible to represent the human being as anything other than male.
Women, she says, are incapable of appearing gender-neutral, of
coming across simply as a human-being. This, according to Sarraute,
is because
Elles sont toujours reprsentes, se reprsentent socialement, se veulent elles-
mmes et cela joue un rle norme direntes de lhomme. Elles ont cer-
q8 The body and sexual dierence
taines habitudes, certaines manires dtre, une certaine voix, certaines intona-
tions dont les trois-quarts, mon avis, sont fabriques, sont le fait de lduca-
tion. Il serait insupportable de faire jouer cette pice [her own Pour un oui ou un
non] par des femmes parce quon ne verrait plus ltre humain, on ny verrait
que des femmes qui se disputent. Il existe une certaine image de la femme,
jusqu prsent indracinable, qui sera plaque, projete immdiatement sur
ces deux tres humains.
9
[They are always represented as, represent themselves socially as, wish them-
selves to be and thats a large part of it dierent from men. They have certain
habits, certain ways, a certain voice, certain intonations, most of which, in my
view, are invented and are the result of upbringing. It would be unbearable to
have this play [her own Pour un oui ou pour un non] acted by women, because one
wouldnt be seeing human beings any more, one would just see women quar-
reling. There exists a certain image of woman, which up until now its been
impossible to eradicate, which will immediately be imposed or projected onto
these two human beings.]
It is no accident that Sarraute should make these comments in the
context of the stage, for both she and Beauvoir share the Existentialist
perception of the theatrical as a form of inauthenticity. In this view, the
stage constitutes an arena for purely specular modes of being, so that a
person on a stage can only appear as inauthentically acting up to
temptations and demands that are mediated by the gaze of the specta-
tors. This perspective powerfully aects the way both writers conceive of
gender dierenes which, as far as women are concerned, are the eect
of the gaze of the other. For Sarraute and for Beauvoir, then, women are
trapped in an inauthentically produced gender identity by virtue of the
fact that they are the object of a gaze: that of men, each others, and
their own as fantasised in the eyes of others.
According to Beauvoir, womens failure (as she sees it) in the world of
work is due to the narcissism which is an inevitable by-product of their
condition: unable to forget their own image in the eyes of others, women
are incapable of losing themselves in absorption in their work, and are
consequently doomed to mediocrity. Moreover and more importantly
for the woman writer this debilitating self-awareness also undermines
the work of women who choose to be artists and writers:
Cest ainsi que, sur la lgion de femmes qui sessaient taquiner les lettres et les
arts, il en est bien peu qui persvrent; celles mmes qui franchissent ce premier
obstacle demeurent bien souvent partages entre leur narcissisme et un com-
plexe dinfriorit. Ne pas savoir soublier est un dfaut qui psera sur elles plus
lourdement que dans aucune autre carrire. (II, p. 6q)
Sexual indierence qq
[Thus, of the legion of women who toy with arts and letters, very few perse-
vere; and even those who pass this rst obstacle will very often continue to be
torn between their narcissism and an inferiority complex. Inability to forget
themselves is a defect that will weigh more heavily upon them than upon
women in any other career. (p. 66)]
This debilitating narcissism is the result of the fact that women internal-
ise a spurious gender dierence produced by the specular gaze.
Sarrautes very similar sense of womens entrapment in a male gaze
stems in her opinion both from the way that that gaze imposes a
certain image upon them (as in the case of actresses on the stage), and
also from the tendency that she ascribes to some of her female charac-
ters to play up to the image that men have of themas women: instances
where la femme joue un rle de femme [a woman acts the role of a
woman] (Qui tes-vous?, p. :o). (I shall come back to this later.)
However, Sarraute diers crucially from Beauvoir on two scores. First,
where Beauvoir devotes herself to exploring these problems as they
gure in the lives of women, Nathalie Sarraute refuses to acknowledge
a separate sphere for womens experience. And second, she maintains
an unshakeable conviction that the absorption and forgetting of self
which in Beauvoirs view are denied to the woman writer, are, on the
contrary, given in the very activity of writing.
10
For Sarraute, to write
one has simply to close ones eyes to the possibility of being seen. Je ne
me vois pas [I do not see myself ] she says repeatedly to Simone
Benmussa in the course of their published conversations. Thanks to her
supposed inability to conceive of herself as someone seen, Sarraute
claims that she is able even on the quasi-theatrical lecturers podium
to nd the freedom that Beauvoir believes still to be unavailable to
women:
moi, jai limpression, que l o je suis, il y a comme une place vide. Je ne peux
jamais imaginer que, quand je quitte des gens, ils parlent de moi. Cela me
donne beaucoup de libert. Quand je fais une confrence devant des tudiants,
je suis toujours trs libre parce que je nexiste pas. Des mots sortent de moi, vont
vers eux, ils seront accueillis puisque ce sont des mots porteurs de quelque chose
qui semble sincre et juste. Mais comment les tudiants me voient? Cela ne
meeure pas. (Qui tes-vous?, p. )
[I have the impression that where I am there is like an empty seat. I can never
imagine that when I leave people, they talk about me. This gives me a great deal
of freedom. When Im lecturing in front of students, I am always very free
because I dont exist. Words come out of me and go towards them, and those
words will get through because they are bearers of something which seems
:oo The body and sexual dierence
sincere and true. But as to how the students see me? The idea never crosses my
mind.]
Writing constitutes an extreme version of this scenario of invisibility and
absorption:
je suis un tel point, dans ce que je fais que je nexiste pas. Je ne pense pas que
cest une femme qui crit. Cette chose-l, ce que je travaille, est en train de se
passer quelque part o le sexe fminin ou masculin nintervient pas. (pp. :o:)
[I am so involved in what I am doing that I dont exist. I dont think that its a
woman who is writing. The thing which Im working on is happening some-
where where the female or the male sex arent relevant.]
Sarraute seems implicitly to be contradicting Beauvoirs pessimism
about womens writing by claiming that the activity of writing can and
does, of itself, confer upon women the condition of invisibility and its
consequent gender-neutrality so often denied to her characters. The
woman writer nds exemption from the ineradicable image of woman
which in the real world is inevitably projected onto real women, because
it would seem writing automatically equips the writer with the cap
which makes one invisible from fairytales which one of the characters
in disent les imbciles briey nds himself wearing (DLI, p. o [p. .8]).
11
Unlike the women who step into the visible arena of the stage or into the
frame of the photographic lens), and have to acquiesce to the image of
woman projected onto them (by men and women alike), the woman who
sits down at her desk to write can simply vanish from sight. And as she
disappears from view she begins to acquire the status of human being
that is the birthright of men, be they actors, writers or anything else. In
a word, then, writing appears as the place where the false dierences
produced by the eects of social interaction can be erased.
orxnrn \xn +nr o\zr
However, in the world of Sarrautes novels, everything is a matter of
negotiating gazes, with characters constantly subjecting each other to
the acutest scrutiny. This raises questions about what, ultimately, could
guarantee invisibility and its consequent immunity from the image pro-
jected by the gaze of the other. disent les imbciles explores more thor-
oughly than any other of Sarrautes novels the experience of this gaze,
as subjects who feel themselves to be lui seul lunivers entier, inni,
sans contours [a universe of their own, innite, and without bound-
aries], are nevertheless viewed by others precisely as characters: un
Sexual indierence :o:
personnage quon lui impose ou quil impose [a character which is
imposed upon him or which he imposes himself ].
12
It is important to
understand the logic of this dilemma before trying to establish how or
indeed whether the writer might really succeed in escaping it.
The gaze in Sarrautes ction is almost always a vehicle for the
construction of stereotypes; and gender dierences are common cur-
rency in the repertoire of these stereotypes. As the multiple subjects in
Tu ne taimes pas put it:
[. . .] Les mieux dous, les plus prcoces se voient dj eux-mmes tels que
tout le monde les voit: en bbs . . . puis en petits garons, en llettes, en garons
manqus . . .
Une fois quils ont pris ce pli de se sentir tels quon les voit, ils le gardent tou-
jours . . . chaque tape de leur vie, ils se sentent tre des femmes, des hommes
. . .
Et rien que cela. De vraies femmes, de vrais hommes . . . le plus conformes
possible aux modles . . .
Oui vrais jusque dans leurs moindres gestes, dans leur voix, leurs intonations
. . .
Et dans leurs passions, leurs aections . . . (TNTP, pp. o:)
[The most gifted among them, the most precocious ones, already see them-
selves as everyone else sees them: as babies . . . then as little boys, as little girls,
tomboys . . .
Once theyve got the habit of feeling themselves to be the way they are seen,
they keep it for ever . . . at every stage in their lives they feel they are women,
men . . .
And nothing more. Real women, real men . . . as similar as possible to
the models . . .
Yes, real, even down to their slightest gestures, voices, their intonation . . .
And to their passions, their attachments . . . (p. .)]
The gender-producing gaze of the other determines every aspect of the
susceptible individual, from identity, to mannerisms and emotional dis-
position in a way that makes of these individuals either men or women
or even proto-feminists (des garons manqus). disent les imbciles
opens with the highly gendered image of a fairytale grandmother who
is constituted primarily as a visual object: Une chose. [. . .] Un objet,
pos l devant nous, tal, oert (DLI, p. :8) [A thing. [. . .] An object,
set there before us, on display, on oer . . . (p. :6)], a magnet for the fas-
cinated gaze of her grandchildren: nous ne pouvions pas dtacher nos
yeux de son doux visage fan (p. :.) [we couldnt take our eyes o her
:o. The body and sexual dierence
sweet faded face (p. :o)]. Furthermore, gathered around this visual
focus, the children are conscious of composing a visual scene themselves,
un tableau de famille charmant (p. :) [a charming family picture (p.
:.)]. It is not just social images (fairytale grandmothers, happy families)
that are produced by and for visual appreciation. Social consensus is
clinched by gazes: that is to say, both by an appeal to visual evidence, and
by an exchange of glances that seals complicity, as the following passage
suggests:
Mais pas du tout, nous ne sommes pas empoisonns, cest vous qui ltes, mon
pauvre, vous avez t inuenc, vous vous tes laiss imprgner . . . cela saute
aux yeux.
Ils se consultent du regard, ils opinent de la tte . . . Je suis du mme avis . . . Oui,
moi aussi . . . (p. 6., my emphasis)
[ Thats not so, we arent poisoned, youre the one, my poor fellow, its you who
have allowed yourself to be permeated by it . . . its plain to see.
They glance at each other, they nod in assent . . .
I agree with you . . . Yes, so do I. (p. q)]
The gaze of the complicitous crowd creates its own evidence which the
individual who is its object is powerless to resist. A child is told he has a
menton en galoche [a prominent chin] and feels his chin actually
growing under the pressure of the gaze of the group who has made the
assertion:
Sur cette tte dont il est aubl maintenant, sur ce visage quil a et qui stale,
comme leurs visages, sous tous les yeux, a savance, a sallonge, un menton
auquel le mot galoche est venu se coller. (p. )
[On that head that hes now rigged up in, on that face of his, which is exposed
to view, like their faces, as everybody looks on, its advancing, lengthening, a
chin to which the word galosh has attached itself. (p. :)]
This particular character undergoes the experience of characterisation
as helpless victim of the views (in all senses of the word) of others, unable
to make himself invisible to the eyes of the world.
There are, however, characters who revel in the look of the other, and
the results are often strongly marked by gender. A character who is vari-
ously described by others as un poseur, a would-be genius, lives his
(implicitly male) role to the hilt:
imbu de lui-mme [. . .]. Imbu. Empli jusquaux bords de lui-mme. Ne
pouvant se quitter. Fascin par limage de lui-mme quil projette. Occup par
elle avant tout. Apportant elle dabord ses soins. (p. :6)
Sexual indierence :o
[full of his own importance. [. . .] Full. Brimming over with himself. Unable to
leave himself. Fascinated by the image of himself that he projects. Preoccupied
with that more than anything else. Caring rst for that. (p. :)]
Women are even more prone than men to this form of fascination with
their image, and are frequently depicted as being both more susceptible
to the gaze of the other and more in need of the consecration that it
brings:
Elle a besoin de se montrer, de se rpandre . . . et il le comprend, il faut quelle
sorte, quelle sare, quelle se retrempe, quelle se fasse admirer, consacrer . . .
(p. 6)
13
[She needs to be seen, to spread herself around . . . and he understands this, she
must go out, take the air, acquire new strength, be admired, sanctioned . . .
(p. 6.)]
Both male and female (in their varying degrees) in Sarrautes universe
are created primarily by the specular gaze of the subject before his
mirror or by that of the admiring crowd.
The gaze of the other is, nevertheless, always treacherous, even for
those who appear to thrive on it. For most, it is experienced as cruel
imposition (like the boy with the menton en galoche), or as a spotlight
that brutally exposes the subject to view. More particularly, the charac-
ter who feels he is protected by a cloak or cap of invisibility is apt to
nd himself caught in the beam of the gaze of others in ways that he is
powerless to control:
il a le plus souvent la rassurante impression de circuler parmi eux comme ce
personnage de conte de fes coi du bonnet qui rend invisible.
Et tout coup, ces rveils brutaux . . . Que sest-il pass? Son bonnet pro-
tecteur a t arrach . . . Le voici expos . . . Il carquille les yeux . . . (p. o)
[more often than not he has the reassuring impression of moving among them
like the fairy-tale gure who wears a cap that makes him invisible.
And all at once these brutal awakenings . . . Whats happened? His protective
cap has been snatched away . . . There he is, exposed . . . His eyes widen with
alarm . . . (p. .8)]
He is forced to concede a likeness in the photograph of himself that the
group confronts him with, until they eventually turn away and he is
restored to his previous condition of invisibility, comme si la place de
son corps, de son visage, il y avait un vide que leurs regards traversent
(p. .) [as though in place of his body, of his face, there were an empty
space which their glances pass through (p. o)].
The blank which the character in question regards as his natural state
:o The body and sexual dierence
has anobvious resemblance tothe cloakof invisibilitywhichSarraute lays
claimto in her own case and which supposedly protects her writing from
the gender-producing gaze of the other. This similarity points to the
possibility that the barrier which, according to Sarraute, separates a
womans writing fromher fate in the social exchanges of the real world,
may not after all be absolute. And indeed, she is perhaps nowhere more
harsh in her treatment of the woman who acts the role of a woman than
inher depictionof thewomanwriter, GermaineLemaireinLe Plantarium.
voxrx vni +rns
There are two women writers who gure in Sarrautes uvre, Germaine
Lemaire in Le Plantarium and her own mother in Enfance, and both are
represented in relation to the visual. Sarraute has also spoken of her
writer-mother in interviews, where she reports that her mother wrote
under a male pseudonym, N. Vikhrovski, a cover which was apparently
never broken.
14
But Sarrautes depiction of her mother in Enfance reveals
a woman who, far from living under a cloak of invisibility, is the centre
of a huge amount of visual attention. Like the grandmother in disent les
imbciles she is delicious to look at. Apparently carelessly indierent to
mirrors, she nevertheless successfully magnetises the gaze of others:
Je la trouvais souvent dlicieuse regarder et il me semblait quelle ltait aussi
pour beaucoup dautres, je le voyais parfois dans les yeux des passants, des mar-
chands, des amis, et, bien sr, de Kolia. (E, p. q)
[I thought she was often delicious to look at, and it seemed to me that that was
how she was for many others as well, I could see it in the eyes of passers-by, of
tradesmen, of friends, and, of course, of Kolya. (p. 8.)]
15
The mothers writing is also a visual and very public aair: when writing
she did not closet herself away in private, but could be seen sitting and
covering page after page with words which are described in terms of
their visual rather than their communicative impact:
ce qui me revient, cest cette impression que plus qu moi cest quelquun
dautre quelle raconte . . . sans doute un de ces contes pour enfants quelle crit
la maison sur de grandes pages couvertes de sa grosse criture o les lettres ne
sont pas relies entre elles . . . (p. .o)
[what comes back to me is the impression that, rather than to me, its to
someone else that shes recounting . . . no doubt one of the childrens stories
that she writes at home on big pages, covered in her large handwriting with its
disconnected letters . . . (p. :.)]
Sexual indierence :o
This is the reverse of the model of communication that Sarraute uses to
describe what happens when she lectures to students: an empty space
where she is, and words which are powerfully directed at their addressees
in the audience. Sarrautes mother exercises a compelling charm (au
sens propre du mot elle me charmait, p. . [in the literal sense of the
word, she charmed me] (p. :q)]), whereas Sarraute seeks to establish
contact.
Moreover, there is a certain gendering of the literary genres that
Sarrautes mother espouses: des romans-euves, des contes pour enfants
et des nouvelles [romans-euves, childrens stories and novellas].
16
Sarrautes own attempt to write like her mother (in the story of the
Georgian Princess that she writes as a child) is portrayed in Enfance as a
dangerous brush with the inauthentic, and provides a glimpse of the
kind of literature that Sarraute ascribes to her mother. It is one that
bears a striking similarity to the style of writing that Beauvoir claims to
be peculiarly characteristic of women. According to Beauvoir, womens
desire to please and to be accepted in the world of men, condemns them
to a fatal caution in literary matters:
La femme est encore tonne et atte dtre admise dans le monde de la
pense, de lart, qui est un monde masculin: elle sy tient bien sage; elle nose
pas dranger, explorer, exploser; il lui semble quelle doit se faire pardonner ses
prtentions littraires par sa modestie, son bon got; elle mise sur des valeurs
sres du conformisme; elle introduit dans sa littrature tout juste cette note per-
sonnelle quon attend delle: elle rappelle quelle est femme par quelques grces,
minauderies et prciosits; ainsi excellera-t-elle rdiger des best-sellers; mais
il ne faut pas compter sur elle pour saventurer sur des chemins indits. (Deuxime
sexe, ii, p. :)
[A woman is still astonished and attered at being admitted to the world of
thought, of art a masculine world. She is on her best behaviour in it; she is
afraid to disrupt things, investigate, cause explosions; she feels she should seek
pardon for her literary pretensions through her modesty and good taste. She
relies on the sure values of conformity; she gives literature precisely that per-
sonal tone which is expected of her, reminding us that she is a woman by a few
well-chosen aectations and preciosities. All this helps her to excel in the pro-
duction of best-sellers; but we must not look to her for adventuring along unex-
plored paths. (p. 666)]
With her masculine pseudonym Sarrautes mother may have been in a
position to avoid the obligatory gestures of ingratiation typical accord-
ing to Beauvoir of most women writers. But at least, as portrayed by
her daughter she nonetheless seeks to guarantee her place in a mans
:o6 The body and sexual dierence
world through her literary conformism, her preference for best-selling
genres and her refusal to take risks with experimental forms of writing.
In short, despite its male signature, the writing of N. Vikhrovski bears
the mark of female gender in its generic orthodoxy, and in its authors
heavy investment in a visual existence.
Much of this also applies to Germaine Lemaire in Le Plantarium.
Germaine Lemaires desire to be accepted in the masculine world of art
and thought takes the form of a particularly narcissistic demand for
recognition. This recognition is invariably solicited from men who are
invited to grant her rights of entry into their world in exchange for her
self-presentation as a woman. Sarrautes portrayal of Germaine
Lemaire is highly critical and shows the ctional woman writer to be
shameless in the way that she uses her feminine identity as the essential
bargaining counter in her negotiations for membership of a world that
belongs to men. Unlike Natachas mother, Germaine Lemaire has no
male pseudonym to alleviate her femininity, and although she is
described as having rather coarse features (des traits taills la serpe,
P, p. :. [p. :]), the issue on Alain Guimiers mind when he visits her
for the rst time is her beauty rather than her literary talent: Elle est
belle, Germaine Lemaire est belle, ils ont raison, cest vident (p. 8)
[Shes beautiful. Germaine Lemaire is beautiful, theyre right, its
obvious (p. q:)]. Natachas mother may have had a better claim to this
epithet than Germaine Lemaire, but the issue is as central for her in
Enfance as it seems to be for Germaine Lemaire in Le Plantarium, and as
we saw in Chapter :, she expresses it in the form of an explicit demand:
Un enfant qui aime sa mre trouve que personne nest plus beau
quelle (E, p. q) [A child who loves its mother thinks that no one is
more beautiful than she (p. 8)]. Germaine Lemaires demand is not
articulated in so many words but it is just as powerful as the testimony
of those who encounter her reveals. Alain comes away from his rst visit
with the sense that Germaine Lemaires reputation beauty and all is
the eect of the response she exacts from those around her:
a ne se fait pas tout seul, la gloire, la rputation . . . il y a comme une faim inas-
souvie, un besoin dadulation . . . on ne lui donne jamais assez . . . elle surveille,
elle mesure, elle doit remettre les gens leur place au moindre manquement . . .
(P, p. q)
[it doesnt just come all by itself, fame, a reputation . . . theres a sort of unsated
hunger, a need for adulation . . . you can never give her enough . . . she keeps a
check, she takes peoples measure, she has to put them in their place at the
slightest lapse . . . (p. :oq)]
Sexual indierence :o
And a fellow member of the coterie tells Alain:
elle sait combien vous ladmirez . . . Et cest a qui compte pour elle par-dessus
tout. [. . .] Pour Maine, voyez-vous, les gens cest des miroirs. Cest des repous-
soirs. Elle sen moque, au fond, des gens . . . (p. :.)
[she knows how much you admire her . . . And thats what matters to her above
all else. [. . .] You see, for Maine, people are mirrors. Theyre foils. In reality she
doesnt care a rap about people . . . (p. :)]
This use of people as mirrors and sources of adulation would seem to
be a cruder version of the response that Maman elicited from shopkeep-
ers, passers-by and her devoted husband in whose eyes Natacha regu-
larly saw the image of her mother produced by their admiration.
But Germaine Lemaire discovers that she cannot exercise complete
control over the production of her image in the eyes of others. And, as
we saw in the discussion of the body in the last chapter, her encounter
with Alains father a man who is deeply sceptical about his sons liter-
ary pretensions leaves her feeling stripped by the older mans gaze, not
only of the adulation which she craves, but of the highly gendered fem-
inine charm which the adoring look of her admirers normally guaran-
tees. She is even inhibited from performing the one gesture that
Natachas mother allowed herself a mirror for, namely to push back a
stray lock of hair that had escaped from her chignon:
quelques mches tristes, elle le savait, pendaient dans son cou, elle navait pas
os lever la main pour les rentrer sous son chapeau. (p. :6)
[a few forlorn locks, she was aware of them, hung down the back of her neck,
she hadnt dared lift her hand to push them up under her hat. (pp. :qo:)]
17
The most damning element of Sarrautes critique of Germaine
Lemaires dependency on the gaze of others is in the disastrous eects it
has on her writing. The thought is rst tentatively voiced by Alain to his
friend in the Lemaire coterie:
Mais si elle est comme a, comme vous dites, si centre sur elle-mme . . . est-
ce que pour un crivain? . . . [. . .] Franchement, est-ce que ce nest pas un dfaut
qui peut tre assez grave . . . Un manque . . . (p. :)
[But if shes like that, as you say, so self-centred . . . for a writer isnt it . . .? [. . .]
To put it frankly, isnt it a failing which could be rather serious . . . A real short-
coming . . . (p. :)]
The friend refuses to hear these doubts, but conrmation of Alains sus-
picions is brought in the chapter that follows immediately after this
conversation. In it Germaine Lemaire nds herself burdened with the
:o8 The body and sexual dierence
ambivalent accolade of our Madame Tussaud, and nally confronts
the fact that the products of her creative eorts are dead: Pas un soue
de vie en elles. Cest en elles que tout est mort. Mort, mort, mort . . . (p.
:q) [Not a breath of life in it. Its there that everything is dead. Dead,
dead, dead . . . (p. :8)]. The feminine demand for admiration and
consecration proves to be incompatible with authentic, living writing.
Sarrautes depiction of women writers in her work would seem, then,
to suggest, that nothing automatically exempts themas writers fromthe
dynamic that operates between the other characters in her world,
nothing that guarantees immunity from sexual dierence. And more-
over, participating in this dynamic proves to have ruinous eects on the
creativity of these writers. Everything turns on the degree of investment
in the visual; for it is the presence of a gaze which generates the paranoia
and the narcissism that go with social relations and so brings gender
into being. The only way to close the breach in which social and gender
dierences emerge is to close the gap between people. For in Sarraute, as
we have repeatedly seen, it is distance that separates person fromperson,
producing the alienating eects that turn characters into dierentiated
characters and destroying the creative eorts of the writer.
i nrx+i ri c\+i oxs
It is not enough, then, for Sarraute to assume that in writing she can
escape social and gendered existence simply by believing like the char-
acter in disent les imbciles in her own invisibility, since nothing auto-
matically guarantees writing this immunity. The solution would seem to
lie in breaking down the distance in which visual relations ourish, and
in creating a relation based on contact rather than sight. There are a
great many ways in which Sarraute seeks to create intimacy of contact,
but there is one in particular that I should like to explore here in more
detail: identication. It is axiomatic in Sarraute that the inner world of
the tropism is a universal phenomenon, and it is on this basis that
identication becomes possible. Alain Guimier articulates the principle
with reference to his aunt, Tante Berthe, when she is dismissively
characterised by another character as une maniaque, voil tout (P, p.
.) [A crank, and thats all there is to it (p. :)]. Alain responds by claim-
ing an identication where his interlocutor sees only dierence:
je ne parviens pas croire une dirence fondamentale entre les gens . . . [. . .]
Je me sens aussitt comme eux, ds que jte ma carapace, le petit vernis . . .
(p. .q)
Sexual indierence :oq
[I cant make myself believe that there is a fundamental dierence between
people . . . [. . .] Right away I feel that Im like them, as soon as I remove my
carapace, this thin varnish . . . (p. )]
Feeling like others is the motive force that drives Nathalie Sarrautes
entire literary enterprise: at the level of the tropism we all supposedly
feel the same; the reader is persuaded of this truth by being made to feel
like the characters; and nally, Sarraute herself claims her prerogative as
author on the basis of her ability, similarly, to feel like her characters.
In one sense, gender is made irrelevant by this pervasive identication:
Alain Guimier identies with his old aunt, and readers identify with
characters regardless of their sex. As Sarraute proudly records in an
interview with Isabelle Huppert:
Quand Le Plantarium est sorti, jai t interviewe par un jeune homme qui ma
dit: Ah! Mais la Tante Berthe cest moi, je viens de me marier, je me relve la nuit pour regarder
les poignes de porte . . . a ma fait un plaisir!
18
[When The Planetarium came out, I was interviewed by a young man who said
to me: Oh! Tante Berthe is me. Ive just got married and I get up in the night
to look at the door-handles . . . I was so pleased!]
But in her conversations with Simone Benmussa, Sarraute comments on
the process of identication in a way that suggests that gender is not
totally irrelevant to it. Her remarks about women on the stage are based
on her view that gender (at least in women) constitutes an obstacle to
identication. And she also suggests that if, in her work, she represents
men as relatively gender-neutral, this is in part the result of the
demasculinising eect of her own identication with them:
Cest trs curieux mais, quand je construis mes personnages, je ne vois pas de
conduite spciquement masculine . . . Si, je sais pourquoi . . . cest que, pro-
bablement, jtablis comme un contre-poids qui agit en sorte que cette conduite
ne me parat jamais typiquement virile puisquelle est aussi ma propre conduite.
Elle devient neutre par le fait que jy participe moi-mme et, dun coup, je la
neutralise. (Qui tes-vous?, p. :.)
[Its very strange, but when I construct my characters, I dont visualise any
specically masculine behaviour . . . Actually, I know why it is . . . its probably
because I set up a sort of counterweight whose eects mean that this behaviour
never seems to me to be characteristically virile because its also my own behav-
iour. It becomes neuter by virtue of the fact that I participate in it, and at a
stroke, I neutralise it.]
It is certainly true that the central gures in the rst three novels (the nar-
rators of Portrait dun inconnu and Martereau, and Alain Guimier in Le
::o The body and sexual dierence
Plantarium) whose function is to provide testimony to the existence of the
tropism, are all lacking in conventional masculine qualities. The middle-
aged male narrator of Portrait dun inconnu pales in terms of virility along-
side the blu masculinity exhibited by Le Vieux or the solidly masculine
virtues of the daughters future husband, Dumontet. Similarly, in
Martereau, the narrators uncle presents himself to the world as a man
toughened by the worlds knocks, and has little patience for what he
regards as the airy-fairy sensibilities of his nephew. And Alain Guimier
is clearly viewed by his mother-in-law as failing to conform to the mas-
culine role she requires for her daughters husband: insuciently serious,
lacking in foresight, apparently uninterested in a proper career, il est
bizarre pour certaines choses, il nest pas comme les autres garons de
son ge (P, p. :) [hes queer about certain things, hes not like other
young men of his age (p. q)]. The tropisms which are Sarrautes quarry
are most palpably present in men whose masculinity is least in evidence.
Yet both tropisms and the creative enterprise that depicts them are
invariably sanctioned by men, not women. If it is a man in the form of
the specialist who comes closest to putting an end to the narrators
attempt to conrm the inner reality he senses in Le Vieux and his daugh-
ter in Portrait dun inconnu, it is nevertheless another man, in the form of
the Portrait of a Man Unknown in the gallery in Holland, who provides
the narrator with the conviction that the inner life exists and so frees him
from the specialists embargo. This is brought about through an experi-
ence of identication that breaks down the distance between the narra-
tor and the painted subject; what counts is not what the Unknown Man
in the portrait looks like, but what he makes the narrator feel like:
Et petit petit, je sentais comme en moi une note timide, un son dautrefois,
presque oubli, slevait, hsitant dabord. Et il me semblait, tandis que je restais
l devant lui, perdu, fondu en lui, que cette note hsitante et grle, cette rponse
timide quil avait fait sourdre en moi, pntrait en lui, rsonnait en lui, il la
recueillait, il la renvoyait, fortie, grossie par lui comme par un amplicateur,
elle montait de moi, de lui, slevait de plus en plus fort, un chant gon des-
poir qui me soulevait, memportait . . . (PI, p. 8:)
19
[And little by little, I became aware that a timid note, an almost forgotten strain
from long ago, had sounded within me, at rst hesitantly. And it seemed to me,
as I stood there before him, dissolved in him, that this faltering, frail note, this
timid response he had awakened in me, penetrated him and reverberated inside
him, that he seized it and gave it back to me increased and magnied as though
by an amplier; it began to rise from me and from him, louder and louder, a
song lled with hope that lifted me up and bore me along . . . p. 8)]
Sexual indierence :::
Moreover, this is a somewhat bizarre form of identication since it
reverses the usual direction of identication in art where the reader or
spectator identies with the represented character.
20
The reciprocity of
the intersubjective relation between the painting and the narrator which
we noted in Chapter , is pushed to a point where, curiously, it is the
painted subject who seems to end up feeling like the narrator: it is he who
returns the narrators intuitions to him in magnied and amplied
conrmation of them, rather than vice versa.
This scene takes place within Sarrautes ction, but there are impor-
tant ways in which Sarraute stages her own literary enterprise within a
context that is validated by men. On a personal level, she claims that it
was her husband who encouraged her to write. When she began
Tropismes in :q., il a immdiatement compris ce que je voulais faire
[he understood immediately what I was trying to do]. Moreover, his
responses as a reader of her work are invoked by her as a guarantee of
its validity. Sarraute read everything she wrote to her husband Raymond
Sarraute, and when she did so je sentais sur le champ ce qui allait ou
nallait pas, because, Au moment o je le lui lisais, nous avions les
mmes ractions [I would know at once what worked and what didnt,
As I read to him, we would have the same responses]. When Raymond
Sarraute died in :q8, Sarraute found herself for the rst time without
someone she could read her work to and who would react like me (Qui
tes-vous?, pp. ::., my emphasis). Raymond Sarraute is presented here
as someone who spontaneously identies with the content and the aims
of his wifes literary project.
From a less personal and more literary-historical perspective,
Sarraute also seeks to validate her work through a series of male
identications. In the preface to Lre du soupon she speaks of a need she
feels to understand her place in the evolution of the novel by examining
the works of other writers, pour dcouvrir travers elles un mouvement
irrsistible de la littrature et voir si mes tentatives sinscrivaient dans ce
mouvement (ES, p. :o) [in an eort to discover an irreversible direction
in literature that would permit me to see if my own quest was in line with
this direction (p. :o)]. In one sense it is hardly surprising if almost all the
examples she chooses are the works of men, since the canonical texts of
both French and Russian literature (her main points of reference)
contain few examples of women writers. But Sarraute is doing more
than map a eld or write a history, and her own writing is presented as
having a particular form of relation to precursor texts that is almost
always grounded in a form of projective identication which turns her
::. The body and sexual dierence
own texts into continuations of the work of male precursors who antic-
ipate her insights.
The prime example of this is Dostoevsky, whose Brothers Karamazov is
not so much analysed as rewritten by Sarraute in her essay De
Dostoevski Kafka. In Sarrautes rendering, his characters become
rather like the Unknown Man in the portrait, agents of a timid appeal,
and incarnations of une manire de se montrer tout proche, accessible,
dsarm, ouvert, oert, tout livr, tout abandonn la comprhension,
la gnrosit dautrui (p. ) [a way of showing that they are quite near,
accessible, disarmed, open, acquiescent, in complete surrender, com-
pletely abandoned to the understanding, the generosity of the other (p.
.)]. She concludes her discussion of Dostoevsky by claiming that
behind the apparent variations of characters and temperaments in his
work, it is possible to discern a sort of new unanimism an assertion
which inscribes her tropisms within the work of her precursor, and pre-
sents her own as a continuation of it.
There is a similar if in some senses more daring move in relation
to Tolstoy in Portrait dun inconnu. Tolstoy oers less propitious material
than Dostoevsky for the sort of vision that Sarraute is seeking to present
as part of a continuous evolution. Indeed, in an article in Les Lettres
franaises, she contrasts the two Russian writers, to the detriment of
Tolstoy whom she dismissively characterises as the novelist of socially
consecrated appearances.
21
But here, in her rst novel, she wrests a
tender concession to her own perception of things out of the curmud-
geonly Prince Bolkonsky, as she interprets his whispered drouzhok or
douchenka to his daughter on his deathbed as an implicit acknowledge-
ment of the existence of
[m]ille ls excessivement tnus, diciles dceler encore ces tremblants et
collants ls de la Vierge [qui] devaient chaque instant partir de la princesse
Marie et se coller lui, lenvelopper. (PI, p. 6)
22
[a thousand extremely ne and barely discernible threads again those trem-
bling, sticky gossamer threads [which] must have emanated continually from
Princess Marie to cling to him, and eventually envelope him. (p. 66)]
These are precisely the ties that the narrator imagines bind the daugh-
ter to Le Vieux in Portrait dun inconnu and are the stu of the psychology
of Sarrautes tropisms. And it is perhaps no more fanciful than
Sarrautes own supposition about Prince Bolkonsky, to imagine that
Tolstoy just as curmudgeonly as his gru Prince is being made to
concede that the writing of his honorary daughter is bringing to light the
Sexual indierence ::
hidden psychological truths that lie behind the hard, closed mask of his
characters.
23
Portrait dun inconnu is also a rewriting of another novel by a man,
Balzacs Eugnie Grandet, in so far as it is at least at a supercial level
the story of a miser and his daughter. Furthermore, it was rst published
with a preface by Sartre which gave it yet another sort of male blessing,
which all subsequent editions including the uvres compltes in the
Pliade have been careful to include.
24
Sartre makes no explicit refer-
ence to Sarrautes sex, and says nothing to suggest that there is anything
characteristically feminine about the novel he is presenting to the public.
Instead, he sets Sarrautes work in a constellation of male references:
Nabokov, Evelyn Waugh, Gide, Roger Caillois, Rousseau, Dostoevsky,
Meredith, Rembrandt, Miro, Heidegger and so on. And he concludes
by describing the book as dicult and excellent, terms which do not
have ready feminine connotations. (Beauvoir in Le deuxime sexe pub-
lished the following year, was, as we have seen, to suggest that womens
writing was more likely to be conventional and mediocre than dicult
and excellent.) In these various ways, then, Sarraute can be seen to stage
her entry as a novelist into the literary world under the sponsorship of
men.
References to women writers in her work are few and far between.
The allusion to Katherine Manseld is only eeting; Mme de Lafayette
is mentioned on a few occasions, but always in association with the male
Benjamin Constant, and even then merely as an example of an out-
moded tradition of psychological analysis. If Ivy Compton-Burnett is
briey alluded to as the author of novels based on dialogue, Sarraute dis-
tinguishes emphatically between her own use of the form and that of
Compton-Burnett.
25
Virginia Woolf is the only woman writer whom
Sarraute quotes at any length (in her critical essay Conversation et sous-
conversation). And we have already seen (in Chapter :) that any sugges-
tion that Sarraute and Woolf might resemble each other is met with
assertions of radical dierences between the two on Sarrautes part.
26
Sarrautes response on this matter uses every means at her disposal to
prevent readers and critics from assimilating the two women writers with
each other, thus limiting the possibility of constructing Sarrautes work
as an example of womens writing.
Every mention by Sarraute of her mothers writing similarly empha-
sises the dierence between the two (elle crivait linverse de moi, avec
une grande facilit et beaucoup de joie [in direct contrast to me, she
wrote with great facility and much joy]);
27
and any allusion to Simone
:: The body and sexual dierence
de Beauvoir always elicits the most oppositional response from Sarraute.
She holds Beauvoir (and not Sartre) reponsible for the cuts imposed on
her rst critical essay, Paul Valry et lEnfant dlphant which
appeared in Les Temps modernes in :q, and also for the same journals
rejection of her essay Conversation et sous-conversation in :q.
28
And
despite a brief friendship between the two women in the late :qos, there
appears to have been little love lost between them: Beauvoir wrote a
hostile account of Sarrautes ction in La Force des choses,
29
and Sarrautes
views about Beauvoir have appeared in print under the title, Nathalie
Sarraute ne veut rien avoir de commun avec Simone de Beauvoir
[Nathalie Sarraute does not want to have anything in common with
Simone de Beauvoir].
30
For all the common cause one may discern
between the two on the issue of gender, Sarraute is interested only in
keeping a distance between herself and this other well-known, post-war
woman writer of her generation.
If Sarraute is to succeed in writing as a human being she can do so
only in the company of men and not of women, creating identications
with male precursors, and receiving from men the baton in the relay race
of literary evolution.
31
But her aim is not to wear trousers la George
Sand, or to become one of the chaps (despite the appearances of the
ditions de Minuit group photograph). Sarraute does not so much want
to be like a man, as to present herself as validated by men who are willing
to admit that they are like her. Theatricality is perhaps ultimately an
inescapable component of Sarrautes enterprise, as she has recourse to
this series of stagings of an identication which nevertheless pre-
supposes a non-specular form of relation. But by means of this dual
manoeuvre a staged invocation of a non-specular identication
Sarraute is seeking to solve the dilemma posed for the woman writer as
she confronts the gender-producing gaze of the world. Like the narra-
tor in Portrait dun inconnu in front of the portrait of the Unknown Man,
she projects her own voice into the work of her male precursors and,
with the blessing of their identication, has them send her out into the
world, delivered from the chain which binds her to her feminine condi-
tion, and exempted from the consequences of sexual dierence.
Sexual indierence ::
r\n+ i i i
Genre and difference
cn\r+rn si x
Criticism and the terrible desire to establish contact
orxrni c ni rrrnrxcrs
Unlike a number of her contemporaries, Nathalie Sarraute always
seems happy to accept inherited generic distinctions. Rather than seek
to challenge or blur generic categories in favour of some general, gener-
ically undierentiated criture (in the manner of Blanchot, Barthes or
Sollers, for example),
1
she concentrates her energies instead on
redening the concepts and assumptions contained within those divi-
sions. Most particularly by means both of her own ctional practice
and of her critical essays she makes herself the champion of a mod-
ernised conception of the novel. Where others (beginning with Sartre in
his Preface to Portrait dun inconnu) had recourse to the notion of the anti-
novel, Sarraute always insists that denitions of ction may need to be
rethought, but that they should certainly not be abolished. [Portrait dun
inconnu] nest pas un anti-roman, les autres non plus, she says in an
interview in response to a question about Sartres use of the term anti-
roman. [Sartre] avait une ide prconue de ce que devait tre une
forme romanesque, alors quil sagit seulement de faire bouger cette
forme. Jcris des romans modernes, cest tout [[Portrait dun inconnu] is
not an anti-novel, nor are the others. [. . .] [Sartre] had a preconceived
idea about what ctional form should consist of, whereas the point is
simply to move this form on. I write modern novels, thats all].
2
Central to Sarrautes thinking on this subject is the idea that the
novel is an inherently evolutionary genre, and that signs of change in
its form are symptoms of its overall health rather than portents of its
imminent demise. She opens her essay Lre du soupon with a side-
swipe at critics who in the name of eternal values insist on imprisoning
the novel within an anachronistic and immutable conception of the
genre: Les critiques ont beau prfrer, en bons pdagogues, faire sem-
blant de ne rien remarquer, et par contre ne jamais manquer une occa-
sion de proclamer sur le ton qui sied aux vrits premires, que le
::q
roman, que je sache, est et restera toujours, avant tout, une histoire o
lon voit agir et vivre des personnages (Lre, p. q) [Its all very well
for critics to prefer, like good pedagogues, to appear not to notice any-
thing, and on the contrary, never to miss an opportunity to proclaim, as
though they were announcing fundamental truths, that the novel, unless
they are very much mistaken, is and will always remain, rst and fore-
most a story where you see characters living and doing things (p.
8)]. They can whistle, says Sarraute: it is of no avail. These good
pedagogical assertions are powerless in the face of evolutionary forces;
character (the point at issue here) is no longer, and can no longer be,
what it was in the time of Balzac. Things move on, and ctional forms
change.
Nevertheless, Sarrautes condence that the boundaries surrounding
ction remain xed while their content evolves, is in its own way
grounded in as essentialist a view of the novel as the one she denounces
here. If the novel is an inherently evolutionary genre, she implies that at
the same time it is constantly evolving towards an ever purer version of
itself. It was Gide who rst spoke of le roman pur in Les Faux-monnayeurs
and Sarraute seems to share his view that all its developments take it ever
closer to its own essence:
Si lon envisage ce mouvement dans son ensemble, si lon considre ses formes
rcentes, il semble quil consiste, dans le roman, comme dans tous les autres arts,
dgager la sensation pure, conserver un contact direct avec la ralit do
elle jaillit, en liminant les formes lourdes, sclroses qui lcrasent. Ainsi ll-
ment sensible se dgage, toujours plus rduit lui-mme. (Forme et contenu du
roman, p. :6)
[If one envisages this development as a whole, if one considers its recent
forms, it would seem that it consists, in the novel, as in all the other arts, in iso-
lating pure sensations, in maintaining a direct contact with the reality from
which they spring, by eliminating the leaden, ossied forms which crush them.
In this way the palpable element emerges, always further reduced down to
itself.]
And in connection with this view Sarraute also frequently describes the
novel as being in need of some sort of promotion that will rescue it
from its Cinderella status in relation to the other arts, or of some
encouragement that will enable this art plus retardataire que les
autres to catch up with parallel developments in the plastic arts for
example.
3
For Sarraute it would seem that the arts develop in broad
parallel, each progressing towards an ever purer version of its own par-
:.o Genre and dierence
ticular essence, so that the development she describes in the novel in
Forme et contenu du roman has its counterparts in other arts and
other literary genres:
Ainsi la musique sest dbarrass du sentiment et de la mlodie pour dgager
le son pur.
Ainsi la peinture dite abstraite sattache xer lattention du spectateur sur
le seul lment pictural.
Ainsi la posie se dbarrasse de la rhtorique et de la rime. (p. :6)
[Thus music has got rid of feeling and melody in order to allow pure sound
to emerge.
Thus so-called abstract painting endeavours to x the viewers attention on
the painterly element alone.
Thus poetry is getting rid of rhetoric and rhyme.]
All this underscores the point that in Sarrautes view, generic boundaries
are not there to be challenged, but constantly rearmed in relation to
contemporary critera. On the question of genre, then, she subscribes
neither to the abolitionists, nor, at the other end of the scale, does she
display any signs of the panic concerning dierence that discussions of
genre can so often produce.
4
Sarraute is known primarily as a novelist, and her ventures into crit-
icism and the theatre tend to be regarded as just that: temporary diver-
sions from a central preoccupation with ction, which far from
undermining its distinctiveness, reinforce it by virtue of the dierence of
their own generic status. Her move into theatre, for example, is pre-
sented by her as something much more thorough-going and radical than
a mere dramatised adaptation of her ctional practices. Rather than
simply transpose her ctional dialogues into a theatrical medium, she
nds a way of turning the whole notion of dialogue upsidedown to meet
the specic generic demands of the theatre:
Ce qui dans mes romans aurait constitu laction dramatique de la sous-con-
versation, du pr-dialogue, o les sensations, les impressions, le ressenti sont
communiqus au lecteur laide dimages et de rythmes, ici se dployait dans
le dialogue lui-mme. La sous-conversation devenait la conversation. Ainsi le
dedans devenait le dehors et un critique, plus tard, a pu juste titre, pour
qualier ce passage du roman la pice, parler de gant retourn.
5
[What in my novels would have been the substance of the dramatic action of
the sous-conversation, of the pre-dialogue, where sensations, impressions and felt
response are communicated to the reader by means of images and rhythm,
are manifest here in the dialogue itself. The sous-conversation became the
Criticism and the terrible desire :.:
conversation. In this way the inside became the outside, and in order to
characterise this movement from the novel to the play, a critic subsequently, and
quite rightly, spoke of a glove turned inside out.]
Her plays may be a continuation of her novels (as she says in an inter-
view of the same title),
6
but they achieve this by distinctly dierent
generic means.
The same is broadly true of her critical essays which, Sarraute is at
pains to point out, are a quite distinct kind of enterprise from her ction.
In her Preface to Lre du soupon she begins by asserting that her novels
are in no way the demonstration of certain a priori theoretical premises,
that fteen years separate the beginnings of her ctional writing (:q.)
from the date of her rst published essay (:q); she goes on to empha-
sise that her novels are the spontaneous expression of felt experience,
whereas her critical essays are a considered, retrospective attempt to
understand her own choices and practices; and she adds that this
attempt, far from being spontaneous and natural (like her creative
writing), was imposed on her from without by the publics apparent
inability to make sense of that writing. In all these ways, then, Sarraute
quite explicitly stakes out a clearly demarcated terrain for her critical
essays which sets them apart by a series of oppositions and dierences
from the ction on which they comment. This is further underscored by
the fact that all the published versions of Lre du soupon carry clear
markers of their generic status. They all bear the sub-title Essais sur le
roman. The :q6 Gallimard edition also advertised the name of the
series in which the essays were included: Les Essais rxxx. The :q6
edition was published under the equally distinctive Ides label at
Gallimard; and the two subsequent paperback editions (:q and :q8)
appeared in the Les Essais and the Folio/Essais collections respec-
tively. The Pliade uvres compltes presents all the critical essays in a
separate category headed simply CRITIQUE. In short, there are no
signs of any uncertainty about the generic category to which the critical
essays belong.
Although the essay as a form does generally constitute a peculiarly
problematic entity when it comes to establishing clear generic cate-
gories,
7
Sarraute seems surprisingly content to accept the critical essays
conventional metalinguistic status and to exploit without compunction
the enunciative authority that is the privilege of the essay writer. The
eects of the publication of Lre du soupon amply conrm this. Its
appearance in :q6 was decisive in drawing the attention of the literary
public to the phenomenon that was soon to be designated the nouveau
:.. Genre and dierence
roman;
8
and Celia Britton has recently (and convincingly) gone so far as
to claim that the group owed its identity far more to the theoretical
writings of its practitioners than to their ctional eorts.
9
Certainly
Sarrautes own reception and reputation have to a large extent
depended on her willingness to engage in critical and theoretical discus-
sion both about her own work and about the novel in general, whether
it be in the form of essays, interviews or the many lectures that she has
given (largely to university audiences) throughout the world.
10
The study
of Nathalie Sarrautes work both in universities and in the critical litera-
ture on it also tends to reect the distinctive status of her critical writings
(and, perhaps because of its availability, Lre du soupon in particular) by
giving them pride of place as exemplary commentaries on, or explana-
tions of her ctional practice.
In other words, the status of the critical writing has largely been that
of a treatise on the novel (as Jean-Yves Tadi has called Lre du
soupon),
11
and the ideas contained in this treatise have become familiar
and crucial points of reference in the critical landscape that surrounds
Sarrautes ction: the attack on Balzacian characterisation; the defence
of a new, so-called tropistic view of psychology based on anonymity;
the discussion of dialogue in the novel with its attendant specically
Sarrautean terminology of conversation and sous-conversation; the
redenition of realism as a preoccupation with form; the general
conception of the novel as essentially innovatory and experimental; and,
nally, the defence of a pre-verbal reality against those who claim that
literature is a self-generating verbal construct.
However, given Sarrautes reluctance to accept received categories,
and particularly her horror of those which are used to erect or impose
dierences, it is strange to nd her so content with traditional distinc-
tions between generic categories: ction, theatre, criticism. One
response to this might be to question Sarrautes apparent complicity
with these dierences and to explore her work for moments when
generic boundaries become blurred or confused, and I shall be doing this
later on in this chapter and in the chapter that follows. But another
response might be to examine the eects that Sarraute is able to exploit
by taking on board received distinctions between ction and criticism.
In this light the question becomes one not of what Nathalie Sarrautes
critical writing says, but rather one of what it does. Not, What kind of
argument do they contain? but, What kind of function do the essays
fulll? What kind of strategic possibilities do the essays oer by virtue of
their generic dierence from the ction they discuss? In a sense, these
Criticism and the terrible desire :.
questions already imply a very Sarrautean approach to the issue since,
as we have seen (in Chapter ), words for her are above all a form of
action, things that do rather than say, whether it be as the agents of count-
less minor crimes, or more neutrally as the medium for the game of
actions and reactions by means of which language becomes for the
novelist the most precious of instruments (p. :o [p. :oq]).
12
In attempting to explore this view of Sarrautes criticism as something
that does as well as something that says, I propose rst to look at how
criticism is represented and dened as an activity within Sarrautes work
as a whole (ctional and critical) in order to show how she presents her
own version of critical practice as dierent from the institutionalised ver-
sions of it. I shall then go on to examine the particular features of
ctional technique foregrounded in her critical discussions, all of which
seemed designed to eradicate dierences between readers and text.
Broadly speaking, we shall nd her playing a kind of double-game
whereby she exploits the generic dierence between critical discussion
and ctional practice in order to educate her reader to respond to the
cues in her ction that will mitigate his otherness (his dierence) and
incite him to participate in the world of the novels by establishing a
direct contact between himself and the text.
I shall be basing my comments not just on Lre du soupon but on all
Sarrautes published essays as well as three of her unpublished lectures
which together form the corpus for the criticism section of the uvres
compltes. The point behind this is not only to establish a more complete
picture of a body of Sarrautean theory, but, more importantly, to make
the issue of their doing present from the start. For by approaching her
critical writings as a sequence of essays, it becomes possible to appreci-
ate their status as interventions where Sarraute repeatedly uses her critical
essays to present her literary activities as a series of dirends with the crit-
ical status quo.
\t+noni +v, nrnrsv \xn nr\ni xo
Until now, I have used the terms criticism and theory more or less
interchangeably when talking about Sarrautes non-ctional writing. But
though the essays are not strictly critical in the sense that they are not
primarily concerned with the works of other writers, they are equally not
purely theoretical to the extent, precisely, that they set themselves up
against the ex nihilo, programmatic or magisterial manner of theory.
While I would not wish to undersell the theoretical import of Sarrautes
:. Genre and dierence
work in this domain, it makes better sense when looking at what this kind
of writing does, to regard them as critical essays rather than theoretical
pronouncements. For time and again, Sarrautes essays dene them-
selves as a ripost to instances of what in Les Fruits dor she terms des argu-
ments dautorit (FO, p. :) [authoritative arguments (p. )], and
whose mere existence provides her with a justication for her recurrent
postures of dissent. From the very beginning indeed, on the very rst
page of her very rst essay devoted to Paul Valry Nathalie Sarrautes
critical voice emerges as that of the Enfant dlphant [. . .] qui posait
toujours des questions et qui se faisait partout rabrouer (PV, p. :.:)
[the Elephants Child [. . .] who was always asking questions and was
rebued wherever he went], daring to question the fundamental truths
of the literary establishment by asking sacrilegious questions. Like many
of the subsequent essays, Paul Valry et lEnfant dlphant is pre-
sented as a challenge to the status quo of a literary dogma whose author-
ity rests solely on the unreecting consensus of its adherents. In the
aftermath of his death, Sarraute is taking on the defenders of the view
that Valry was a great poet; and in the process she is also calling into
question the view of literature propounded by Valry as being a matter
of intellect rather than feeling, contemplation rather than contact. The
issues raised by this redenition are important ones and I shall be return-
ing to them later; but for the meantime, there remains more to be said
about the way that Sarrautes critical voice repeatedly appears as a
heretical intervention in a literary orthodoxy.
Sarrautes critical essays are almost always presented as a form of
provocative dissent from critical orthodoxies of one kind or another,
marking a dierence in approach from an established norm, and intro-
ducing a series of dirends into the literary-critical arena. This is cer-
tainly how her comments on psychology in the novel are staged in her
next essay, De Dostoevski Kafka. First published in Les Temps mod-
ernes, it oers itself once again as a form of sacrilegious utterance,
daring to contest a conception of the novel that was closely identied
with Les Temps modernes itself, the so-called novel of the absurd (i.e.
Camuss Ltranger and the kind of American ction exemplied by
Hemingway and Caldwell), which Sarraute characterises as both mis-
guided in its refusal of psychological interiority and profoundly
conformist in its principles of composition. The third essay, Lre du
soupon opens with the attack on the conventional critical dogma that
a novel is a story in which you see characters living and doing things;
and Ce que voient les oiseaux continues in a similar vein by reversing
Criticism and the terrible desire :.
the traditional opposition between formalism and realism. In short,
these rst essays are each targeted against a series of critical orthodox-
ies, and repeatedly present Sarraute as a critical heretic bravely assert-
ing her dierence against the accepted norm.
This stance is maintained throughout the :q6os as she contests a
certain line of thinking in the nouveau roman (and for which Jean Ricardou
was the spokesman), summed up by her as The idea that the reality
of a work depends solely on an exploration of language, and which she
dismisses quite simply and peremptorily as manifestly untenable (La
littrature, aujourdhui, p. :68). This characteristic critical contrariness
culminates in her talk at the Cerisy colloquium on the nouveau roman in
:q:, where she begins by describing herself once again as a lone voice
at odds with the beliefs and assumptions of the group she nds herself
in. In admitting to her initial reluctance to participate in the colloquium,
she says:
Si jai tant hsit, cest que je savais que je me trouverais ici de nouveau, comme
je lai t si souvent au cours de ma vie, dans une situation assez singulire. Dans
un certain isolement dont dailleurs je ne me plains pas il ma probablement
t ncssaire mais enn il nest pas assez agrable pour que jaille dlibre-
ment le chercher. (Ce que je cherche, p. :6q)
[If I hesitated for so long, it was because I knew that, as has happened to me so
often in the course of my life, I would nd myself once again in a somewhat
singular situation here. In a certain isolation which in fact I am not complain-
ing about it has probably been necessary to me but still it is not suciently
pleasant for me to go deliberately searching it out.]
This remark acknowledges as both recurrent and necessary to her, the
role of renegade amongst a group of believers. The underlying nature
of this group as a bande de croyants remains the same, whether they
be defenders of the reputation of Paul Valry, the proponents of a
behaviourist representation of human experience, the guardians of a
traditional view of ction, or the theorists and practitioners of ludism
and the freeplay of the signier. For this reason, it is no accident that the
vocabulary of orthodoxy and sacrilege, dogma and heresy pervades Les
Fruits dor (the novel which deals most directly with the nature of critical
activity), or that so much of the book consists of imaginary scenes which
act out scenarios based on the terms of these oppositions. For example:
Quest-ce que cest? Qui trouble lordre? Quest-ce que cest que cette folle,
cette illumine qui parcourt la terre, pieds nus et en haillons, crie sur les places
publiques, se frappe la poitrine, appelle la pnitence, prche la parole du
:.6 Genre and dierence
Christ, pointe son doigt crochu sur les grands de cette terre, nargue lordre
tabli, annonce le Jugement dernier . . . On lentoure. Leurs regards la lapident.
Elle est repousse, expulse. Le cercle des dles se referme. (p. 86)
[What is it? Whos disturbing the peace? Who is this mad, exalted creature who
goes about the world in her bare feet and dressed in rags, shouts out in public
squares, beats her breast, urges penitence, preaches the word of Christ, points
her crooked nger at the great of the earth, outs the established order,
announces the Last Judgement . . . They surround her. Their looks lapidate her.
She is repulsed, expelled. The circle of the faithful closes again. (p. 8)]
As a critic Sarraute always implicitly casts herself as a version of this
mad woman preaching heresies in public places and outing the estab-
lished order, a renegade whose dierence is apt to lead to the exclusion
that so often accompanies the phenomenon in Sarraute: rejection and
expulsion.
However, Les Fruits dor makes it very clear that the established order
is also a critical order, so that criticism in Sarrautes world must be seen
as taking two very dierent forms: dogma as well as heresy. I should
therefore like to turn now to the way in which she depicts what one might
call criticism-as-dogma which her own interventions so provocatively
thumb their nose at. Criticism of the type practised by circle of the
faithful is invariably represented as a form of argument dautorit, and
is consequently treated by Sarraute with the deepest suspicion. It
appears as a self-justifying orthodoxy that simultaneously saps the life-
blood of the literary text and destroys the readers relation with it. This
implication is clearly visible in one of her earliest ctional characters, the
anonymous professor of Tropismes xii who lectures on literature at the
Collge de France:
Il se plaisait farfouiller, avec la dignit des gestes professionnels, dune main
implacable et experte, dans les dessous de Proust ou de Rimbaud, et talant aux
yeux de son public trs attentif leurs prtendus miracles, leurs mystres, il expli-
quait leur cas. (T, p. 6)
[He enjoyed prying with the dignity of professional gestures, with relentless,
expert hands, into the secret places of Proust or Rimbaud, and then, displaying
their so-called miracles, their mysteries before the gaze of his highly attentive
audience, he would explain their case. (p. 6)]
His destructive achievement is ironically summed up in his concluding
claim that:
je les ai vids pour vous de leur puissance et de leur mystre, jai traqu, harcel
ce quil y avait en eux de miraculeux. (p. )
Criticism and the terrible desire :.
[I have emptied them of their power and their mystery for you, I have tracked
down and harried what was miraculous about them. (p. 6)]
The chief fault of the master-critic here is both that he fails to respect
the dierence that the miraculous otherness of the texts of Proust or
Rimbaud represent, and also that he refuses to enter into a relation of
contact with the text, subsuming it instead into his own self-promoting
discourse. The practice of criticism-as-dogma is always presented as this
kind of power-game where its objects are expertly and implacably
emptied of their puissance for the sole benet of that of the critic.
The language of this type of criticism is extensively parodied in Les
Fruits dor so as to appear as an oppressive and mysticatory nonsense
which never brings critical illumination to the text, and which merely
bolsters the authority of the critic: Oui. Evidemment. Il y a l un envol
qui abolit linvisible en le fondant dans lquivoque du signi . . ., is
the comment of one of the parodied critics [Yes. Quite so. There is a
move there which erases the invisible by dissolving it in the ambiguity of
the signied]. Readers qui avaient eu pendant un bref instant lespoir
de se xer dans les pays riants quils avaient entrevus [who for a brief
moment had been hoping to settle in the pleasant lands which they had
glimpsed] nd themselves having instead to bow to a rgime of forced
labour imposed by the vacuous but nonetheless repressive critical
authorities:
[ils] reprennent leur marche, morne troupe captive tranant ses chanes, chasse
vers quelles immensits marcageuses, quelles tendues sans n de toundras
glaces. (p. 6)
[[they] resume their trek, a dreary band of captives, dragging their chains, ban-
ished to heaven knows what marshy wastes, what endless stretches of icy tundra.
(pp. q6o)]
The dogmatic critic is someone who seeks to promote his own status at
the expense of both the text and its readers. His discursive currency is
the argument dautorit, a self-generating critical discourse with no
relation to the text it supposedly describes, and which interposes itself to
deadly eect between the reader and that text: Les arguments dau-
torit. Rien dautre. Jamais aucun contact vrai, aucun sentiment spon-
tan (FO, p. :) [Authoritative arguments. Nothing else. Never any real
contact, no spontaneous feeling (p. )].
For Sarraute, the contact which we have seen to be the underlying
impulse in human relations, is equally essential to criticism if it is to have
any value. In fact, contact appears often as the very opposite of criticism,
:.8 Genre and dierence
with criticism almost invariably constituting a barrier that stands in the
way of contact. We should perhaps recall that for Sarraute contact is
always presented as the means whereby subjects are brought into a rela-
tion with each other and boundaries between them erased. This goes for
the relation between texts and readers too. In recounting her attempt to
make up her own mind about Valrys poetry, Sarraute describes herself
as rst needing to shut out the world (Je navais qu menfermer dans
ma chambre; fermer ma porte tous les bruits du dehors, PV, p. :..
[I could just shut myself away in my room; close the door on all the
noises of the outside world]); and then having to prise the text free of its
surrounding commentary in order for an authentic encounter to be pos-
sible:
Quelle couche chaque jour plus paisse de vernis protecteur ne fallait-il pas
gratter, quelle gangue solide et dure, chaque jour plus solide et plus dure, de
paroles louangeuses et de commentaires enthousiastes ne fallait-il pas briser
autour de chaque ligne, de chaque strophe, de chaque vers, pour les faire appa-
ratre la lumire! (PV, p. :.)
[What a layer of protective varnish you had to scratch o, and it got thicker by
the day, what a solid, hard gangue of words of praise and enthusiastic com-
mentary you had to break open, and it got thicker and harder by the day, sur-
rounding each line, each verse, in order to bring them to the light of day!]
This solitary meeting between reader and text is for Sarraute the only
valid relation between the two.
The immediacy and spontaneity of readerly contact are evoked in
very similar terms by Sarraute nearly twenty-ve years after the Valry
article, in her talk at Cerisy, where she describes the way she reads the
critical essays of others. Her habit, she says, is to reverse the normal
sequence of reading this kind of writing, and to defer the commentary
until she has made independent contact with the quoted extracts from
the literary text being discussed. The eect is to render even the best
instances of critical comment marginal, or even ultimately superuous:
Quand je lis un article critique, cest aux citations que je vais dabord, puis,
ayant pris contact avec le texte un contact si direct et si spontan quaucun
commentaire venu du dehors ne pourra le modier je lis avec intrt ce quen
dit le critique, je relis les citations cette lumire, je cherche retrouver ce quil
y a vu ce qui parfois enrichit ma relecture, sans jamais me faire perdre ma pre-
mire impression. (Ce que je cherche, pp. :6q6)
[When I read a critical article, I always go to the quotations rst, then, having
made direct contact with the text a contact which is so direct and so spontane-
ous that no commentary from outside can alter it I read what the critic says
Criticism and the terrible desire :.q
about it with interest, I re-read the quotations in the light of what he says, I try
to nd the thing that he sees in it which sometimes enriches my re-reading,
but without ever making me lose my rst impression.]
These two accounts of reading (Valrys poetry and critical essays)
demonstrate that for Sarraute criticism is anathema to contact, and that
there is an important distinction to be made between reading and crit-
icism. To the extent that reading can be dened as a form of contact
(and in Sarraute the two terms are virtually synonymous), her own so-
called critical writing is not so much a form of criticism as a defence of
reading, which frequently takes the form of what Jonathan Culler
(admittedly in a rather dierent context) has called stories of reading.
13
There is a sense in which for Sarraute all criticism tends ultimately to
become dogma, and her essay on Valry is not intended as a better crit-
ical account than those proposed by existing commentaries, but is
oered quite explicitly as a story about the experience of reading his
work.
It begins with a description of the various responses elicited by her
question about whether Valry was really a great poet (which, inciden-
tally, recalls the very similar scene which opens Portrait dun inconnu),
14
continues with her decision to see for herself as she shuts herself away
in her room, and above all it presents the text as an event in its own right:
[luvre de Paul Valry] serait pour moi ce que toute uvre dart, comme le
dit si bien Thierry Maulnier, peut tre chaque moment et pour tout lecteur
qui se place en face delle, un vnement neuf et un commencement absolu.
(PV, p. :..)
[[Paul Valrys work] would be for me, as Thierry Maulnier puts it so well, what
any work of art can be at each moment and for every reader who stands before
it, a new event and an absolute beginning.]
Contact is made possible by the status of the work of art as event, a status
which means that the only valid sort of commentary about it will be a
narrative of the readers experience. This, at any rate, is the formula
which Sarraute adopts when writing about the works of other authors
such as Dostoevsky, Kafka and Flaubert:
Je vous ai prvenus que je regarderais cette uvre [here, Flauberts Salammb]
comme un vnement neuf et sans ide prconue. Ici soyons sincres, et disons
ce que font surgir en nous ces belles descriptions ciseles et cadences.
(Flaubert, p. :6.q)
[I warned you that I would regard each work as a new event without any pre-
conceived ideas. Lets be frank here and say what feelings these beautiful, chis-
elled, rhythmical descriptions produce in us.]
:o Genre and dierence
What she is proposing here is not an interpretation, nor an analysis, nor
a judgement, but an account of the response that the work provokes in
its reader.
For this reason criticism does indeed turn out to be as much of a mis-
nomer as theory when talking about Sarrautes essays. Although
Barthes is just the kind of critic who gives criticism a bad name for
Sarraute (and whose particular kind of critical language is heavily par-
odied in Les Fruits dor), his discussion of the dierence between criticism
and reading in Critique et vrit seems to echo very closely her own feeling
on the question, and may help to explain where the problem about crit-
icism might lie:
le critique ne peut en rien se substituer au lecteur. Cest en vain quil se pr-
vaudra ou quon lui demandera de prter une voix, si respectueuse soit-elle,
la lecture des autres, de ntre lui-mme quun lecteur auquel dautres lecteurs
ont dlgu lexpression de leurs propres sentiments, en raison de son savoir ou
de son jugement, bref de gurer les droits dune collectivit sur luvre.
[The critic can in no wise substitute himself for the reader. In vain will he
presume or will he be asked by others to lend a voice, however, respectful,
to the readings of others, to be himself just a reader to whom other readers have
delegated the expression of their own feelings as a consequence of his know-
ledge or his judgement, in other words, to exercise by proxy the rights of the
community in relation to the work.]
15
The critic, says Barthes, can never be a spokesman for the reader,
because, as he goes on to explain, reading implies a relation with the text,
criticism inevitably and only a relation with critical language:
Passer de la lecture la critique, cest changer de dsir, cest dsirer non plus
luvre, mais son propre langage. (p. q)
[To move from reading to criticism is to change desires, it is no longer to desire
the work, but ones own language. (p. q)]
This is exactly the view which we have seen amply and repeatedly
reected in Sarrautes own representation of criticism. Reading for, in,
and, ideally, of Sarraute is very much a matter of desire and, more
especially, of desire as identication which takes the form described
here by Barthes:
Seule la lecture aime luvre, entretient avec elle un rapport de dsir. Lire, cest
dsirer luvre, cest vouloir tre luvre, cest refuser de doubler luvre en
dehors de toute autre parole que la parole mme de luvre. (pp. 8q)
[Only reading loves the work, entertains with it a relationship of desire. To read
is to desire the work, to want to be the work, to refuse to echo the work by using
any language other than the language of the work. (p. q)]
Criticism and the terrible desire ::
It is precisely because criticism is so unavoidably deected from its object
by its investment in its own language that Sarrautean heresy never
aspires to the status of criticism as such. Sarrautes essays aim, instead,
to be an expression of the desire embodied in reading: they speak in the
name of that desire, or, as in the case of the stories of reading, oer nar-
ratives of Sarrautes encounters with works that have to a greater or
lesser degree responded to its identicatory thrust.
In other words, the terrible desire to establish contact applies as
much to the relations between the reader and the text as it does to the
psychology of the tropism. The desire that drives Dostoevskys charac-
ters towards an impossible and calming embrace also drives the reader
on in the same search for a similar ideal relation in this case with the
text (Dostoevski, p. [p. .]). This, at least, is the presupposition
behind the essays; it is also the reponse that the novels would like to elicit
from their real readers; and it is an experience that is occasionally repre-
sented within the novels themselves. For instance, the lone reader at the
end of Les Fruits dor is depicted in just such a relation: unable to express
the textual embrace by means of critical comment and le vocabulaire
perfectionn [des] savants docteurs (FO, p. :.) [the well-honed vocab-
ulary of those learned Doctors (p. :8)], he articulates his contact and
expresses his readerly desire by speaking directly to the work itself:
Ce silence o vous baignez, dpouill de tous les vtements et ornements dont
vous aviez t aubl, nu, tout lav, ottant la drive, avec moi cramponn
vous, rend trs troit notre contact. Nous sommes si proches maintenant, vous
tes tellement une partie de moi, quil me semble que si vous cessiez dexister,
ce serait comme une part de moi-mme qui deviendrait du tissu mort. (p. :)
[The silence in which you are immersed, divested of all the garments and the
ornaments in which youd been rigged out, naked, washed clean, oating adrift,
with me clinging on to you, makes our contact a very close one. We are so near
to each other now, you are so much a part of me, that it seems to me that if you
ceased to exist, it would be as though a part of myself had become dead tissue.
(p. :.)]
The text is regarded here by its reader not as a linguistic construct that
might lend itself to contemplation or analysis, but as a kind of being that
has an existence beyond language, and this is precisely what makes
contact possible: silence [. . .] makes our contact a very close one.
What, then, does all this imply about Sarrautes own so-called crit-
icism? It is certainly something very dierent from my own commentary
which in a Sarrautean schema is bound to appear uncomfortably like the
lectures of the professor at the Collge de France as I try to explain the
:. Genre and dierence
case in hand. But at the risk of seeming to have been deaf to the values
I have been elucidating, the discussion so far has established rst, that
her essays take the form of a heretical intervention into systems of crit-
ical orthodoxy (they assert a dierence); and second, that they speak in
the name of readerly contact with the text rather than with the aim of
providing critical interpretation (they claim a critical identication). In
other words, they seek to do what Barthes has argued that the contra-
dictory logics of readerly versus critical desire make impossible when he
says that because he uses a language other than that of the text, the critic
can never act as spokesman for a collectivity of readers. Nevertheless,
and logic notwithstanding, Sarraute writes precisely in the hope that
la rponse que je me ferais moi-mme ne vaudrait pas pour moi seule. Elle
serait peut-tre aussi la rponse timide de quelques-uns de ces lecteurs incon-
nus qui, isols les uns des autres, enferms dans leurs chambres solitaires, en face
de [l]uvre sinterrogent avec inquitude et stonnent. (PV, pp. :..)
[the answer that I would give myself would be valid not just for me. It might
perhaps also be the timid reply that a few of those unknown readers who, in iso-
lation from each other, and shut away in their solitary rooms, sitting before [the]
work anxiously wonder and are astonished.]
There remains more to be said about the paradoxical nature of the
essays as criticism that speaks in the name of reading, and I shall be
coming back to this question later. In the meantime, I want to consider
the use that the essays make of the critical capacity which they have
inspite of themselves as it were for the benet of the reader of
Sarrautes own ction. For the essays are addressed not to other critics
but to a reader, a lone individual and not a member of a critical sect, in
short, to the unknown readers shut away in their rooms invoked in the
Valry essay. More particularly, the reader of the essays is treated as an
actual or potential reader of Sarrautes own ctional uvre, and thus as
someone who may be trusted not to take critical language at face value.
s +n\+roi rs ron cox+\c+
It is a striking feature of the essays that their literary and technical con-
cerns are almost exclusively with those aspects of writing which bring
reader and ctional text into closer contact. The readers own potential
for dierence is conceived of as a distance separating him from the text
which it is the writers task to reduce. The appeal to shared experience
made by Sarrautes writing requires the removal of all the obstacles
Criticism and the terrible desire :
which might stand between text and reader since they introduce a fatal
dierence-as-distance between the two.
One of the biggest obstacles of this kind, in Sarrautes view, is tradi-
tional character, and this is the rst topic that she confronts in Lre du
soupon. The exterior representation of character promoted by the novel
of the absurd is, according to her, already a barrier to contact, since it
presents character only in terms of sa duret [. . .] et son opacit
(Dostoevski, p. .o) [its hardness and opacity (p. 6.)]. Anachronistic
forms of Balzacian characterisation are equally rebarbative: for whereas
in Balzacs time the portrayal of a gure like Pre Grandet represented
[un] terrain dentente [[a] meeting ground] between author and
reader, the persistence of such representations in the modern era has
opened up a breach between author and reader. Character of this type
has become [un] terrain dvast ou ils [author and reader] sarontent
(Lre, p. 6) [a devastated terrain on which they confront each other
(p. 8)], promoting not just distance, but outright hostility. In order to
restore entente between author and reader, character has to adapt to
the readers new-found knowledge of human psychology which, says
Sarraute, is the combined legacy of the work of Joyce, Proust and
Freud.
Moreover, the manner in which that psychology is depicted in writing
is just as urgent a critical question as is its content for Sarraute: no longer
a matter of the old analysis of feelings (ES, p. ::) psychology becomes
the living substance of all my books (p. q). The essays explain that this
is achieved by representing that psychology as a phenomenon that
unfolds simultaneously with the writing of the text. In an interview in
:q6, she sums up the point as follows: Chez moi, il sagit de montrer
des actions intrieures en train de se faire, des actes en train de se pro-
duire qui ne sont pas analyss mais seulement donns [In my work, the
point is to show internal actions as they are produced, acts in the process
of taking place which are not analysed but just given].
16
The distance
implied by retrospect is abolished through the creation of this impres-
sion of a simultaneity between the writing and consequently the
reading and the action itself.
However, this would still leave open the gap implied by the depiction
of pscyhology in the form of a spectacle which the reader merely
observes, if Sarrautes conception of writing were not designed to shift
the action from an imaginary stage in the novel to an inner space located
within the reader himself as she explains in the preface to Lre du
soupon:
: Genre and dierence
il ntait possible de communiquer [les tropismes] au lecteur que par des images
qui en donnent des quivalents et lui fassent prouver des sensations analogues.
(ES, p. 8)
[it was not possible to communicate them to the reader other than by images
that create equivalents and make readers experience analogous sensations (p.
8)]
Sarrautes reections on the novel in these essays are largely about the
technical means of bringing about this shift of scene. This suggests that
critical self-consciousness is not necessarily alienating or incompatible
with the ultimate goal of immediacy of impact:
Il est donc permis de rver [. . .] dune technique qui parviendrait plonger le
lecteur dans le ot de ces drames souterrains que Proust na eu le temps que de
survoler, [. . .] qui donnerait au lecteur lillusion de refaire lui-mme ces actions.
(Conversation, pp. ::6:)
[It is therefore permissable to dream [. . .] of a technique which would succeed
in plunging the reader into the stream of these subterranean dramas of which
Proust only had time to glimpse a rapid aerial view, and [. . .] which would give
the reader the illusion of repeating the actions himself. (p. ::)]
If this dream could be technically realised, the reader would be moved
up so close to the action of the novels that the boundary which separ-
ates him from the text would be dissolved, and the symbiosis imagined
by the gure at the end of Les Fruits dor might become a guaranteed liter-
ary reality. It is as if Sarraute were prepared to take a detour through a
potentially alienating critical awareness, and to rummage around in her
own literary insides explaining her own technical case, in order to for-
mulate fantasies about this ideal embrace between reader and text
where the dierence between the two would be erased.
The discussions of rst-person narration and of dialogue represent
two further aspects of this project. The rst person is conceived of as a
device to draw the reader onto a version of the meeting ground pro-
vided by character in the traditional realist novel:
Tout est l, en eet: reprendre au lecteur son bien et lattirer cote que cote
sur le terrain de lauteur. Pour y parvenir, le procd qui consiste dsigner par
un je le hros principal constitue un moyen la fois ecace et facile. (Lre,
p. 6)
[Indeed, it all turns on this issue: dispossessing the reader and enticing him, at
all costs, onto the authors territory. To achieve this, the device that consists in
referring to the central character as I constitutes a means that is both simple
and eective. (p. q)]
Criticism and the terrible desire :
The use of dialogue is similarly designed to lure the reader into the uni-
verse of the text. The underlying concern behind Sarrautes preoccupa-
tion with the modus (he said, she replied) is the issue of contact between
author and reader.
17
According to Sarraute, these little phrases under-
mine the novelists aim because they reintroduce the distance which
traditionally separates author from character and character from reader
in a novel:
Elles marquent la place laquelle le romancier a toujours situ ses personnages:
en un point aussi loign de lui-mme que des lecteurs; la place o se trou-
vent les joueurs dun match de tennis, le romancier tant celle de larbitre
juch sur son sige, surveillant le jeu et annonant les points aux spectateurs (en
loccurrence les lecteurs) installs sur les gradins. (Conversation, p. :o8)
[They mark the site on which the novelist has always positioned his characters:
a point as remote from himself as from his readers; in the place of players in a
tennis match, while the novelist occupies the position of the umpire, perched
on his seat, supervising the game and announcing the score to the spectators (in
this case the readers) sitting on the terraces. (p. ::.)]
Dispensing with the modus is a means of closing this gap and bringing
author, reader and character into mutual contact.
The use of dialogue in the form of the combined eect of conversation
and sous-conversation is viewed by Sarraute as a further device for involv-
ing the reader in the action of the novel and creating a contact which
elicits his active response:
Le lecteur, sans cesse tendu, aux aguets, comme sil tait la place de celui qui
les paroles sadressent, mobilise tous ses instincts de dfense, tous ses dons
dintuition, sa mmoire, ses facults de jugement et de raisonnement.
(Conversation, p. :.o)
[The reader, constantly tensed, on the alert, as if he were in the shoes of the
person to whom the words are addressed, mobilises all his instincts of defence,
all his powers of intuition, his memory, his faculties of judgement and reason-
ing. (p. ::q)]
The dialogic nature of the novels obliges the reader to call on all his
human resources as if he were himself directly implicated as their
addressee.
The essays that deal with realism (Ce que voient les oiseaux, and the
two lectures Roman et ralit and Forme et contenu du roman) go
further than the previous ones by claiming that awareness of formal and
technical issues is actually essential to the readers grasp of the reality the
author is trying to represent. Realism for Sarraute is not a matter of
:6 Genre and dierence
accurate resemblance, but of a joint involvement between author and
reader in a quest for the real. The reality which the novelist seeks is by
denition new and uncharted: cest toujours du rel qui na pas t pris
dans des formes convenues [it is always a part of reality which has not
been xed in accepted forms]. Forms have constantly to be renewed and
revised:
Il est ncessaire que les formes se dplacent continuellement. On ne peut plus
reprendre les formes anciennes sans retrouver une substance romanesque anci-
enne, elle aussi connue.
[Forms need to be moved on constantly. One cannot re-use old forms without
nding old ctional material, which is also familiar.]
18
This means that critical awareness becomes a necessary condition of the
novels realism. If the reader is to share in the pursuit of an elusive
reality, he must go through the same critical education as the novelist,
unlearning old habits, and participating in the discovery of new ones.
First of all, he needs to undertake a thorough rethinking of character-
isation, a project which is so vital that critical guidance must sometimes
be included in the novels themselves. Indeed, Portrait dun inconnu could
be seen as one long lesson on the subject, and the novel contains some
quite overtly critical moments, such as the discussion of the character of
Prince Bolkonsky in War and Peace. This discussion is virtually indis-
tinguishable from the essays, and the reading of Tolstoy is more or less
identical to the account of Dostoevsky in De Dostoevski Kafka. At
these points the critical enterprise becomes inseparable from the creative
one, and the readers participation in the text requires a degree of crit-
ical awareness that it is the essays special task to promote, but which is
evidently not their exclusive preserve. (I shall be returning later to this
blurring of generic dierences in Sarraute.)
If the readers contact with the text is so urgently sought by Sarraute
that critical lessons must sometimes be included in the ction, this
implies the possibility of a reluctance or failure on the readers part to
make the contact he is assumed so terribly to desire. And, at times, the
essays do seem to anticipate possible resistance from the reader. Far from
being shut o from the world in solitude and perplexity, awaiting
endorsement of his own uncertain responses in the form of Sarrautes
spokesmanship (as in the scenario in the Valry essay), he is also depicted
as someone in need of some quite rm handling: having to be stripped
of his possessions and drawn at all costs onto the authors ground. But
these signs of his occasional reluctance merely highlight the mutual
Criticism and the terrible desire :
nature of the desire for contact: if in principle, at least the reader
desires contact with the text, the text is equally desiring of its readers.
Signs of a recourse to technical force and pedagogical self-commentary
are proof of the fact that the text can no more stand the resistance and
opacity of its readers, than can the characters it portrays. It is as desper-
ate as they are to
essayer par nimporte quel moyen de se frayer un chemin jusqu autrui, de
pntrer en lui le plus loin possible, de lui faire perdre son inquitante, son
insupportable opacit. (Dostoevski, p. )
[try, by any means available, to clear a path to the other, to get inside him as
deeply as possible, to make him to lose his disturbing, unbearable opacity. (p.
.)]
And like these same characters, the texts desire for contact with the
other le[. . .] pousse souvrir lui [son] tour, lui rvler [ses] plus
secrets replis [impels him to conde in him in turn, and to reveal to him
[his] own innermost recesses]. In so far as the essays are part of this urge
to break down the terrifying opacity of the other and draw him into the
orbit of the novels, the function of their critical awareness is to remove any
obstacles (outmoded assumptions, readerly resistance) that might stand
between reader and text, and not to add to them in the manner of the
sort of critical commentary that surrounds the work of Paul Valry. In
short, the essays both contain an inventory of the devices used by the
novels to draw the reader into their embrace, and themselves constitute
just such a device: oering explanations that help to dispel the dis-
turbing, unbearable opacity of the work, inviting the reader behind the
scenes, and into its most intimate recesses, to share the authors creative
preoccupations and concerns.
cni +i ci sx \xn\s ri c+i ox
Nevertheless, nothing guarantees this transparency, and Sarraute
appears very conscious of the risk that her own commentaries might
become an impediment to contact (gangue rather than embrace); and
in interviews she frequently attempts to divert the attention of potential
readers away from the essays and back to the ctional texts:
je suis entirement daccord avec Roland Barthes quand il nie la possibilit pour
un crivain de communiquer aux lecteurs par des discours ou des crits autres
que son uvre elle-mme les sens dirents, le plus souvent ignors de lui,
quelle contient, de renforcer par des articles ou des dclarations limpression
:8 Genre and dierence
que seule luvre elle-mme, dans la forme particulire quil a choisie, peut
donner.
[I agree entirely with Roland Barthes when he says that it is impossible for a
writer to communicate to readers the dierent meanings contained within his
work, which he is most often unaware of himself, by means of words or writ-
ings other than the work itself, or to underscore by means of articles or declara-
tions the impression that only the work itself in the particular form that he has
chosen for it, can give.]
19
The reason she gives for the impossibility of critical communication with
the reader is that critical self-commentary requires of the writer un
langage [. . .] trs dirent de celui quil emploie dans son uvre crite
[a very dierent kind of language from the one he uses in his written
work]. Critical language, she says, is not only dierent, but positively
dangerous, since it brings with it a degree of lucidity which undermines
the creative impulse:
Une grande lucidit, une conscience trop claire au cours du travail seraient, me
semble-t-il, assez dangereuses; je crois que limpulsion cratrice trouve au
dpart sa source dans linconscient. (p. .8)
[A great deal of lucidity or too clear an awarenss while one is working seem to
me to be rather dangerous; I think that the creative impulse originates from the
outset in the unconscious.]
One solution to the threat posed by the excessive lucidity and the lin-
guistic dierence of critical commentary is to eace or eclipse it before
the literary text by directing the reader to set it aside and return to the
text, as Sarraute does here. But another means of achieving this would
be to create maximum homology between the two forms of discourse,
and actively work against the dierence between the two. I have already
discussed how critical language forms an integral part of the ction; so
I should now like to look at the homology from the reverse perspective,
and consider the ways in which the critical essays repeat the ctional
strategies used in the novels as a means of eroding the generic dierences
between the two forms of writing.
One of the most frequently used ways of replicating the ction in the
essays is the miming in the criticism of scenarios that appear in the
novels. I have already suggested that the essays themselves are staged in
the terms of a particular scenario which is a recurrent feature in the
novels: the lone gure (le voyou qui trouble lordre [the hooligan who
disturbs the peace] of disent les imbciles (p. :: [p. q]), as well as the
exalted creature of Les Fruits dor) who deliberately or inadvertently
Criticism and the terrible desire :q
comes up against the concerted opposition of established opinion, social
and cultural, as well as specically literary. In miming these gestures of
opposition, then, the essays are strongly identifying themselves with the
ction from the outset. Similarly if somewhat paradoxically the prise
de conscience and the lucidity associated with criticism and whose per-
nicious eects Sarraute condemns in the remarks quoted above, are
nonetheless an integral element of the ction. In describing her essays
as a retrospective attempt to understand her own writing, Sarraute is
repeating another gesture that is fundamental to the experience of the
characters in her novels as well as to the work of the novelist:
Jai t amene ainsi rchir ne serait-ce que pour me justier ou me ras-
surer ou mencourager aux raisons qui mont pousse certains refus, qui
mont impos certaines techniques. (ES, p. :o)
[As a result, if for no other reason than to seek justication, reassurance or
encouragement for myself, I began to reect upon the motives that impelled me
to reject certain things, and to adopt certain techniques. (p. :o)]
Not only does this account of the genesis of the essays establish an order
of events which preserves the spontaneity of the creative impulse in the
unconscious, but it also follows the course that events tend to take in the
ctional and dramatic work. Action itself very frequently appears in
Sarraute as a spontaneous or unconscious phenomenon which can only
be grasped by a retrospective unpacking of an event. It emerges as a
response to the question what happened? which is asked both by the
characters and by the novelist/ narrator:
Vous me dites quelque chose, je sens un malaise ou je rougis, il est impossible
que je lempche, et cest l que commence mon travail: que sest-il pass? Quel
mouvement avez-vous accompli pour produire en moi cet autre mouvement?
[You say something to me, I feel a moment of unease or I blush, its impossible
for me to stop it, and thats where my work begins: what happened? What move-
ment did you perform to produce in me this other movement?]
20
In other words, as well as being stories of reading, the essays also become
stories of writing which, by turning back to the novels and treating them
as a similar sort of spontaneous or unconscious event, re-enact the plot-
forms of the ctions whose writing they narrate.
This mimicry goes very deep and it is reinforced by a number of
more localised rhetorical and stylistic eects.
21
In particular, the essays
make extensive use of the irony, metaphor and dialogue which
characterise so much of Sarrautes ctional work. For example,
:o Genre and dierence
Conversation et sous-conversation opens with a heavily ironic dismis-
sal of Virginia Woolf:
Qui songerait aujourdhui prendre encore au srieux ou seulement lire les
articles que Virginia Woolf, quelques annes aprs lautre guerre, crivait sur
lart du roman? Leur conance nave, leur innocence dun autre ge feraient
sourire . . .(p. 8)
[Who today would dream of still taking seriously, or even just reading, the arti-
cles that Virginia Woolf wrote a few years after the First World War on the art
of the novel? Their nave condence and their innocence from another age
would only elicit a smile . . . (p. q)]
It was a risky piece of rhetoric and even some of the most well-disposed
critics missed the ironic intent,
22
but it does illustrate the degree to which
the language of the novelist comes naturally to the critic. This is even
more evident in the essays use of imagery, some of which also appears
in near-identical form in the novels. For example, in the Valry article
Sarraute uses a highly metaphorical passage to describe the eect that
reading La Jeune Parque has on her:
Je venais de reconnatre cette vieille odeur aigrelette de chion humide et de
craie, cette vieille odeur rassurante et familire dencre et de poussire qui otte
autour des souvenirs dexercices et deorts scolaires. (p. :.)
[I had just recognised that old sour smell of damp cloths and chalk, that reas-
suring, familiar old smell of ink and dust which hovers around memories of
schoolroom exercises and exertions.]
The same image returns in Vous les entendez? some twenty-ve years later
where the father reluctantly submits to the verdict passed on his children
as des cancres [dunces]:
Se levant, prenant cong, prenant la fuite, fuyant travers les tristes cours cou-
vertes de gravier, de ciment, le long des hideux couloirs lodeur de poussire
humide, de dsinfectants, le long des mornes salles vitres o des mdiocres
ingurgitent docilement des bouillies insipides . . . (VLE, p. )
[Getting up, taking leave, taking ight, eeing across the miserable playgrounds
covered in gravel, cement, down the hideous corridors which smell of damp
dust, of disinfectant, past the dreary classrooms behind glass partitions, where
mediocrities docilely ingurgitate inspid pap . . . (p. .)]
In both essay and novel, the dreary atmosphere of the classroom is
evoked to convey a sense of enforced mediocrity and obligatory
conformism. The fact that the image appears in the essay so long before
the novel is yet another sign of the extent to which the language of the
Criticism and the terrible desire ::
essays repeats and mimes even to the extent of anticipating that of
the novels.
Jean-Yves Tadi has drawn attention to the widespread use of spoken
language and dialogue in the essays,
23
but there is also a way in which,
above and beyond this use, the essays themselves are fundamentally con-
ceived as components of a dialogue. In their heretical guise, they appear
as a retort or a challenge to existing views, a posture which of itself
implicitly presupposes a dialogue of sorts. A somewhat more concilia-
tory version of this confrontation is sketched by Sarraute in one of her
lectures where she accepts the possibility of critical dierence as dia-
logue, and she asks: lessentiel nest-il pas, dans une rencontre comme
celle-ci, de discuter, de confronter des points de vue? [the main thing,
isnt it, in an encounter like this one, is to discuss and compare points of
view?] (Roman et realit, p. :6). More frequently and more consis-
tently, however, the essays adopt a distinctly complicitous tone of
address, as if they were one half of a dialogue with a silent and largely
assenting reader. For instance, the reading of Camus in De Dostoevski
Kafka is presented as a shared undertaking: Enn! Nous y voil donc.
Ce dont nous nous tions timidement douts se trouve dun seul coup
conrm (p. .6) [Now we have it! At last! What we had timidly sur-
mised is suddenly conrmed (p. 6)]. And the ironic comment on
Virginia Woolf cited above clearly presupposes an addressee who knows
how to interpret it correctly.
The implicitly dialogical character of the essays becomes overt in the
lectures, and after Lre du soupon (with the single exception of the essay
on Flaubert) all Sarrautes critical work started life in lecture form.
24
Although the lectures were written out in full and delivered from a script,
Sarraute always had beside her a set of what she has called notes de
plaidoirie [barristers notes lit. notes for the speech for the defence],
consisting of a list of headings corresponding to the dierent points she
intended to cover, and designed above all to lend the lectures as much of
a spoken air as possible.
25
The lectures testify to a powerful awareness of
their audience whom Sarraute frequently addresses in the second
person: Je vous ai propos de vous parler aujourdhui du langage dans
lart du roman. Et ce propos je vous ferai part de quelques opinions . . .,
etc. [I have suggested to you that I would talk to you today about language
in the art of the novel. And its in this connection that I shall tell you about
various opinions . . .] (Le langage dans lart du roman, p. :6q, my
emphasis). Elsewhere she describes the occasion as a causerie [chat,
conversation] (Forme), and in fact from the :qos onwards she aban-
:. Genre and dierence
doned the lecture format entirely in favour of the rencontre or
causerie which took the form of question and answer sessions, so
making explicit the underlying dialogue contained in the more tradi-
tional lectures. Moreover, one might see in the open acknowledgement
of dialogue in the lectures and the causeries which replaced them an
anticipation or rehearsal of the explicitly dialogic narrative frame of
LUsage de la parole where the narrator directly addresses the reader with
remarks like Vous allez voir, prenez patience, or Tchekhov, vous le savez,
tait mdecin (UP, pp. ::, :.) [Youll see; just be patient, Chekhov, as
you know, was a doctor (pp. , )] (my emphasis).
All this would seem to conrm that through dialogue, irony and meta-
phor, the writing of the essays mimes the ction to a very considerable
degree. But another point also emerges from the orientation of the
essays as dialogue, for the eect of this slant is to gure the reader in a
way which has important implications for his role in relation to the
ctional texts. In an interview (and, incidentally, the interview format is,
of course, yet another version of the dialogue as a vehicle for critical
ideas) Sarraute has talked about her conception of the audience of her
lectures as a collective instance of the silent but assenting reader postu-
lated in the essays:
Quand je suis devant un auditoire, je ne vois que des gens grosso modo sympa-
thisants et qui sont comme moi. Il nest pas question dhostilit ni de rsistance:
ils sont comme moi.
[When I am in front of an audience, I only see people who are generally well-
disposed and who are like me. Theres no question of any hostility or resistance:
they are like me.]
26
The lectures, like the early essay on Valry, conjure up addressees who
are like me, beings whose sensibilities ultimately make them ideal
readers of the novels. The very overt and direct forms of address used
in the lectures and heavily implied in the critical writings, work towards
creating this ideal reader for the ction. And indeed, Sarraute goes on
to describe the critical self-commentary in LUsage de la parole as a means
of creating the reader of her desires: Je montre au lecteur quoi on va
jouer, je lui donne les rgles du jeu [I show the reader what we are going
to play, I show him the rules of the game]. This device works, accord-
ing to her, because the reader is a gure whom she conceives of as like
her: Dans ma navet, je crois toujours que le lecteur est exactement
comme moi, que celui qui me lit a les mmes sensations que moi [In
my naivety, I always believe that the reader is exactly like me, that the
Criticism and the terrible desire :
person reading me has the same sensations as me] (p. ). This is the
counterpart to the process of identication through which the readers
desire for the text manifests itself: just as the reader desires the text by
wishing to become the text, so the author desires the reader as a self-pro-
jection with whom she too can in turn identify.
One of the purposes of the critical writing is to create such a gure
from whom real readers of the novels may take their cue. This is perhaps
not so much a matter of miming as of projecting, but the reader called
up by means of this projection in the criticism constitutes a crucial link
between the essays and the ction. He is a gure who ts in multiple ways
into the terrible desire to establish contact, being the object of the
authors desire for contact through the text, and imagined as the subject
of a reciprocal desire. The readers contact with the text is made possi-
ble, rst by a critical self-commentary which spells out the rules of the
game so that nothing may stand in the way of maximum participation;
and second, by turning that commentary into a rehearsal of the scenar-
ios and the rhetoric of the novels themselves. The essays are thus both
precept and example, both a saying and a doing, and as such, they put
the reader through a dual apprenticeship for the ctional corpus.
There seems, in other words, to be no limit to the terrible desire to
establish contact in Sarrautes work, and the essays constitute a particu-
larly intense if risky instance of it: adopting the potentially alienating
language of critical lucidity inthe hopes of making the reader experience
the text as a living part of his own self, and capable ultimately of address-
ing it in the words of the gure depicted at the end of Les Fruits dor:
Nous sommes si proches maintenant, vous tes tellement une partie de moi, que
si vous cessiez dexister, ce serait comme une part de moi-mme qui deviendrait
du tissu mort.
[We are so near to each other now, you are so much a part of me, that it seems
to me that if you ceased to exist, it would be as though a part of myself had
become dead tissue.]
In short, Sarraute both emphasises and undermines the generic
dierences between her critical essays and her ction in order to create
readers who will relinquish the habits of mind that might place them at
a distance from her texts, and who will consent instead to a blurring of
their own boundaries which would otherwise separate them from the
text. The strategic function of Sarrautes generically distinctive critical
discourse is ultimately to produce a universal fusion where boundaries,
distance and dierences will no longer exist.
: Genre and dierence
cn\r+rn sr\rx
Same dierence: reprise and variation
The voyage of variations leads into
that other innitude, into the innite
diversity of the interior world lying
in all things.
Milan Kundera
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
ri c+i ox \xn \t+oni oon\rnv
Unlike the critical works which we considered in the last chapter, the
publication of Nathalie Sarrautes Enfance (in :q8) raised some teasing
questions about its generic status. On the one hand it was treated simply
as the latest addition to Sarrautes ctional output, its lack of any explicit
generic marker making it no dierent from its similarly unmarked pre-
cursor, LUsage de la parole. And yet on the other hand, the texts own
embarrassed acknowledgement of its aliation to the category of
childood memories invites a reading of it as an autobiographical record
of its authors childhood in other words, as a venture into a new and
dierent genre. Gallimard, Sarrautes publisher, has presumably with
her blessing if not on her initiative supported both strategies: on the
one hand Enfance is included in the chronological sequence of her prose
writings in the Pliade uvres compltes (which, however, provides no
generic heading for the prose texts, as distinct from the Thtre and the
Critique); and on the other hand, the Folio edition of the text appears
with an enchanting photograph of a six-year-old Natacha on the front
cover and a blurb on the back which refers to a childhood spent between
Russia and Paris, and which describes the book as oering a chance to
voir se dessiner le futur grand crivain [see the emergence of the future
great writer], all of which implicitly present the text as autobiography
as opposed to ction. Similarly, critics are divided between treating
:
Enfance as interchangeable with the other prose texts in her corpus, and
responding to it as an example of a particularly innovatory manifesta-
tion of autobiographical writing, on a par with those of Leiris, Sartre,
Barthes and so on.
1
In other words, the question raised by Enfance is: is
it the same as the ction, or is it dierent? And moreover, same or
dierent in what way?
The arguments for it being the same are made in the opening pages
of the text as a counter to the anxiety expressed by the narrators double
that she (the narrator) may be succumbing to the easy temptations
oered by the project of recording her childhood memories.
2
Where the
double worries that the project might be a symptom of incipient senil-
ity, or at least a sign that Sarraute is abandoning her lment (E, p. 8
[p. .]), the narrator herself counters with the reassurance that the (unre-
assuring) characteristics of her element are still intact:
cest encore tout vacillant, aucun mot crit, aucune parole ne lont encore
touch, il me semble que a palpite faiblement . . . hors des mots . . . comme
toujours . . . des petits bouts de quelque chose dencore vivant . . . (p. q)
[its still vacillating, no written word, no word of any sort has touched it, I think
it is still faintly quivering . . . outside words . . . as always . . . little bits of some-
thing still alive . . . (p. )]
This claim places the new enterprise rmly within the context of
Sarrautes previous writings whose subject matter, the tropism, is pre-
cisely the wavering, wordless, palpitating thing evoked here.
But there are a number of other, more specic ways in which Enfance
appears as a continuation of Sarrautes ction that is to say, as the same
as the ction. The rst of these is the dialogue between the narrator and
her double, which in the context of conventional autobiographical prac-
tice looks like a new and radical departure; but this strategy is much less
of a new departure when it is placed in the context of the overall
development of Sarrautes ction. LUsage de la parole had already reintro-
duced a rst-person narrator into Sarrautes ction after his disappear-
ance following Martereau (there being no rst-person narrator in her work
from Le Plantarium onwards). Not only did this narrator acknowledge his
role as a writer, but he did so in a dialogue (albeit a one-sided one) with
a reader who, like the double in Enfance, is assumed to be already famil-
iar with Sarrautes writing.
3
For example, in commenting on the phrase
Si tu continues, Armand. . . . [If you carry on like that, Armand . . .]
in Ton pre. Ta sur., the narrator acknowledges that it had already
appeared in a previous work, and then, after expressing surprise that the
:6 Genre and dierence
silent reader had remembered the words, he goes on to apologise for the
need he feels to revisit them: il faut tout de mme, pardonnez-moi, que
jy revienne . . . (UP, p. q) [Even so, I hope youll forgive me, I must
come back to them again (p. )]. Although in LUsage de la parole the dia-
logue is carried out with a reader rather than an active co-creator, and
although that reader remains silent (in contrast to the double whose
question opens Enfance), his presence is as palpable in the text as
Clamences equally silent interlocutor in Camuss La Chute or the gentle-
men to whom the narrator of Dostoevskys Letters from the Underworld so
provocatively addresses. The silent addressee of LUsage de la parole
contributes signicantly toward the strongly other-directed commentary
of the narrator in a manner which closely pregures the mix of scepti-
cism and cooperation which characterises the relations between the nar-
rator and her double in Enfance.
4
The narrators double also harks back to gures such as LAlter in
Portrait dun inconnu, and more importantly to the double who splits o
from the writer in Entre la vie et la mort in order to judge the authentic-
ity of his writing and whom the writer calls variously a witness, a
judge, and later on, my double (EVM, pp. 6q, :6q [pp. 68, :8]). But
just as importantly, the narrator and her double would seem jointly to
anticipate the multiple subject of the text which followed Enfance, Tu
ne taimes pas, where two have become an innumerable plurality who,
just like the duo whose commentary underpins Enfance, express them-
selves solely in dialogue. This plural subject consisting of multiple
virtualities, which could never be reduced to a single coherent entity,
also seems to be designed to undermine in retrospect any authorial
identity which the autobiographical eects of Enfance may have pro-
duced. The retrospective strategy implied in this development clearly
places Enfance within a continuous ctional evolution, rather than
assigning it a dierent, extra-ctional status to one side of the main
prose corpus.
Structurally too, the textual organisation of Enfance as a series of frag-
ments relates it to many of Sarrautes other texts, beginning most
notably with Tropismes and revived in equally striking form in LUsage de
la parole where the central focus of each of the component texts is pro-
vided by an utterance whose multiple ramications and resonances the
writing is devoted to exploring. Indeed, Chekhovs dying words, Ich
sterbe, in the rst text of LUsage de la parole anticipate both in colour and
in language (German), the prohibition of the governess which forms the
kernel of the rst remembered scene of Enfance, Nein, das tust du nicht.
Same dierence: reprise and variation :
And the fragment was, of course, also the basis of Sarrautes last works,
Ici and Ouvrez.
Finally, the presumption of retrospect associated with autobiography
is ignored in Enfance in favour of a predominantly present tense, which
also provides the centre of gravity in the ction and indeed constitutes
an essential part of its purpose. That purpose is most clearly articulated
in Conversation et sous-conversation where Sarraute argues that it is
important to move beyond a retrospective vision which xes experience
in the form of memory, and to try instead to convey the movements of
the inner life as if the reader were living them himself: les revivre, et [.
. .] les faire revivre au lecteur dans le prsent, tandis quils se forment et
mesure quils se dveloppent (Conversation, p. q8) [relive them, and
[. . .] make the reader relive them in the present, while they are forming
and as they develop (p. :o6)]. If Enfance is devoted to recalling the past,
that past is resurrected and relived as present, and the combined work
of inward exploration and of the writing process itself serves to shift
moments of a past merely recollected (Jtais assise, encore au
Luxembourg [. . .] [I was sitting, again, in the Luxemburg Gardens
[. . .]]) into a moment of present immediacy and intensity:
et ce moment-l, cest venu . . . quelque chose dunique . . . qui ne reviendra
plus jamais de cette faon, une sensation dune telle violence quencore
maintenant, aprs tant de temps coul, quand, amoindrie, en partie eace
elle me revient, jprouve . . . mais quoi? quel mot peut sen saisir? (E, pp. 66)
[and at that moment, it happened . . . something unique . . . something that will
never happen again in that way, a sensation of such violence that, even now,
after so much time has elapsed, when it comes back to me, faded and partially
obliterated, I feel . . . but what? what word can capture it? (p. 6)]
In all these ways, then, Enfance is inscribed within the continuous evolu-
tion of a self-consistent literary genre in a manner which makes it very
much the same as both its precursors and its successors within that
corpus.
5
Problems only arise when we consider how we might characterise this
literary genre. For if it is to include Enfance with its overtly autobiograph-
ical gestures, then the category of ction becomes an awkward one. But
rather than get involved in the intractable debates about truth and
ction which recent autobiographies have provoked, it might be worth
simply sticking with the issues of sameness and dierence. And if we
shift the perspective slightly on this issue, it emerges that the sameness of
Enfance in relation to the writings which can unproblematically be classed
:8 Genre and dierence
as ctional, can also if paradoxically become the basis for its
dierence. That is to say that the appeal to lived experience which the
autobiographical character of Enfance makes by virtue of its status as
autobiography, works to ground the experience of the ction in a truth
which would otherwise remain purely speculative or hypothetical.
Although the ctional texts seek to persuade their readers of the experi-
ential truth of what they narrate, they cannot do so except by using the
strategies of rhetorical persuasion which are ctions sole recourse. It is
only in the extra-ctional space of commentary that Sarraute can
eectively make the truth-claims for her work on which it nonetheless
depends. Thus, it is in the :q6 preface to the critical essays Lre du
soupon (in other words, in the frame of what is in eect a sort of com-
mentary the preface on commentaries the essays) that we learn that
the tropisms of which she writes in her novels are an intimate part of her
own experience which goes back to the childhood which Enfance was to
portray twenty years later: ces impressions taient produites par certains
mouvements, certaines actions intrieures sur lesquelles mon attention
stait xe depuis longtemps. En fait, me semble-t-il, depuis mon enfance
[these impressions were produced by certain movements, certain inner
actions which had held my attention for a long time. Indeed, since my
childhood, I think] (ES, p. 8, my emphasis). Similarly, it is in the extra-
literary format of the interview that Sarraute spells out the nature of the
autobiographical basis of her work:
Les lments autobiographiques, comme chez tous les crivains, existent
partout: dans ce sens que je ncris pas de choses que je nai jamais prouves
ou que je nai jamais vu quelquun prouver. Mais a ne veut pas dire que ce
sont des choses tires de ma propre vie. Je ne connais pas dhomme plus
gnreux qutait mon pre et jai dcrit un pre avare. Je ne me suis pas servie
dlments autobiographiques, mais simplement de sensations, dimpressions,
parpilles partout.
[As in all writers, there are autobiographical elements everywhere: in the sense
that I never write about things that I have not experienced or that I have not
seen someone else experience. But that doesnt mean that these are things taken
from my own life. I dont know anyone more generous than my father was and
I portrayed a father who is a miser. I didnt use autobiographical elements, but
just sensations and impressions that are scattered all over the place.]
6
It is these sensations and impressions which Enfance is seeking to ground
in the lived experience of the child. If the familiar claim made by novels,
All is true (as Balzac has it in Le Pre Goriot), is really to carry weight,
then it must be made outside the genre on behalf of which it speaks. In
Same dierence: reprise and variation :q
this sense, the validity of the truth-claims of the ction depends on their
having a source in a writing which is (generically) dierent from the
ction: critical essay, interview, or autobiographical text.
In Sarrautes case these truth-claims are psychological or experiential
rather than anecdotal, and she makes this point very concretely in an
interview with Arnaud Rykner, where she distinguishes between the
quality of an experience as actually lived and the ctional scenarios in
which it is represented:
Quelquefois je pars dun tropisme vcu, mais que je dplace: je le prends dans
dautres circonstances, je cre autour de lui un milieu ambiant dans lequel il
pourra spanouir et qui nest pas celui o je lai personnellement vcu. [. . .]
Prenez le texte sur langoisse dans Portrait dun inconnu. Le fait que sa lle lui vole
du savon rveille le personnage en pleine nuit. Dans la ralit, je nai jamais
expriment cela, de prs ou de loin. Ce que jai expriment, cest cette sorte
dangoisse qui tout coup se xe sur une chose quelconque. Cherchant rendre
cette sensation, je me suis dcide pour la barre de savon qui en elle-mme ne
rpond aucune exprience personnelle comme rien dailleurs dans Portrait
dun inconnu.
[Sometimes I start from a lived tropism, but I place it somewhere else: I take it
from other cirumstances, I create an environment around it in which it can
develop and which is not the one that I personally experienced. [. . .] Take the
passage about anguish in Portrait dun inconnu. The character is woken in the
middle of the night by the fact that his daughter is stealing soap from him. I
have never experienced that in real life, at close quarters or at a remove. What
I have experienced is that sort of anguish which all of a sudden xes on some
object or other. In trying to convey that sensation I decided on a bar of soap
which in itself does not correspond to any personal experience as indeed
nothing in Portrait dun inconnu does.]
7
As far as Enfance is concerned, the psychological kernel of an experience
as distinct from the accident of its circumstances is repeatedly
emphasised at key points in the text so as to make this its fundamental
autobiographical component. In this, fundamental sense, then, Enfance
no dierent from (no more and no less autobiographical than) the
ction. Thus, the opening dialogue between the narrator and her double
establishes that the anecdotal material of the childhood memories will
be validated as a literary enterprise chiey by virtue of the fact that they
all contain little bits of something still alive in other words, the lived
tropisms which constitute the material of the imagined episodes of the
ction (such as the one involving the stolen soap in Portrait dun inconnu).
And beyond this global directive to the reader to focus his attention
on this level of the reality of the books contents, a number of the epi-
:o Genre and dierence
sodes in Enfance seem, in one way or another, to possess an exemplary
status whose general signicance eclipses the particular material hap-
penstance of the past. For instance, the rst recollection where the young
Natacha dees her governesss prohibition and plunges a pair of scissors
into the silk upholstery of a sofa in a Swiss hotel, has been widely inter-
preted by critics as being emblematic of Sarrautes whole literary enter-
prise: with its challenge to authority and convention, its submission to
impulse, its implicit attack on the mother who is repeatedly described in
association with her silky skin, the split in the smooth surface of the
upholstery evoking the various splits and ssures in Sarrautes writing
through which the tropism seeps, and nally the formless grey matter
revealed beneath the surface by the childs assault, recalling the matire
anonyme comme le sang, [le] magma sans nom [the substance as
anonymous as blood, [the] magma without name] of the tropism itself.
8
In a less metaphorical and more explicit mode, the episode where a
well-meaning housekeeper says to Natacha Quel malheur quand mme
de ne pas avoir de mre (E, pp. :.o.) [What a tragedy, though, to have
no mother (pp. :o)] presents the eect of the words on the child as
a rst encounter with an experience (that of being trapped inside a
word) which has subsequently been repeated on numerous occasions in
her life. The double asks, Ctait la premire fois que tu avais t prise
ainsi, dans un mot? [Was that the rst time that you had been trapped
like that, inside a word?]; and the narrator replies, Je ne me souviens
pas que cela me soit arriv avant. Mais combien de fois depuis ne me
suis-je pas vade terrie hors des mots qui sabattent sur vous et vous
enferment [I dont remember it happening to me before. But how
many times since have I not escaped, terried, out of words which
pounce on you and hold you captive]. This rmly underscores the para-
digmatic character of the event, and invites readers to see similar epi-
sodes in the ction as grounded in real experience.
Nevertheless, over and above this paradigmatic dimension of certain
episodes and the books stated emphasis on the tropismic element in all
the scenes it portrays, there are certain moments which, in so far as they
present scenarios depicted elsewhere in Sarrautes writing, lend them-
selves to being read as the true autobiographical or denitive account
of partial or distorted ctional versions which have appeared elsewhere.
As autobiography Enfance is susceptible to this kind of inevitable, if
nave, referential reading which presupposes a generic dierence in the
way that the same material is treated. Moreover, this generic distinction
between Enfance and the other prose texts is underscored through its
Same dierence: reprise and variation ::
conformity with the basic generic requirement of autobiography
identied by Philippe Lejeune: namely that author, narrator and pro-
tagonist should all refer to the same person.
9
In this instance, the
complication of the narrator having a double can be accommodated
within the schema by virtue of the fact that despite or rather, because
of the shifting character of the gender used to refer to him/her, s/he
does represent an aspect of the writing part of Sarraute herself. A
propos of the masculine adjectives outrecuidant [presumptuous] and
grandiloquent which the narrator ascribes to her double at one point
(pp. 8q [p. .]), Sarraute has said in an interview: Mon double est forc-
ment asexu. Si je mettais un fminin, cela voudrait dire que je me sens
tre une femme. Ce que je ne me sens pas [My double is necessarily
asexual. If I used the feminine, it would mean that I feel that I am a
woman. Which I dont].
10
In other words, the extra narratorial com-
ponent in the form of the asexual double, far from introducing an
element of ctional ambiguity into the autobiographical pact between
the text and its reader, stands on the contrary as additional proof of
Sarrautes total involvement in her autobiographical enterprise by
representing the asexuality of Sarrautes actual writing self. Finally, and
less subtly no doubt, in addition to this generic requirement that author,
narrator(s) and protagonist refer to the same person, the simple fact of
the match between Enfances account of Natachas childhood and the
evidence of independent biographical data concerning Nathalie
Sarraute, serves to reinforce the texts validity as true in its own right,
regardless of any claims it may also be making implicitly on behalf of
the ctional texts.
Read as a true account, certain scenes then stand out as the authen-
tic or original versions of scenes that readers have encountered else-
where in Sarrautes work. Perhaps the key episode here concerns the
train journey where Maman accompanies Natacha to Berlin, which
clearly recalls a similar scene in Entre la vie et la mort where there is also a
train journey, a mother, a child, an implicitly Russian landscape and a
game with words. The temptation with this scene is to assume that the
Enfance version is making explicit an emotional experience of being
separated from the mother which has somehow been repressed or
excised from the ctional version, thus prompting a reading of the
ctional text against the autobiographical one. Similarly, the allusion to
a homework assignment entitled Mon premier chagrin [My rst
sorrow] in Entre la vie et la mort (p. 6 [p. 6:]), may retrospectively acquire
an extra charge of emotional and aesthetic signicance when placed
:. Genre and dierence
alongside the much fuller account of such an assignment in Enfance. In
each case it is possible to read the autobiographical episode as the full
and original truth behind its partial ctional equivalent.
Other moments in the text lend support to this kind of approach,
nave as it may seem. For example, the occasion when Mamans literary
friend puts an end to Natachas early attempts at writing with the
comment that Avant de se mettre crire un roman, il faut apprendre
lorthographe (E, p. 8) [Before anyone sets out to write a novel, they rst
need to learn to spell (p. )]makes an implied allusion to Sarrautes
reference to the same episode in an interview with Pierre Demeron in
:qq. Demeron narrates the experience as an instance of [un] trauma-
tisme denfance dont elle [a] longtemps conserv les traces [[a] child-
hood trauma which left its mark on her for a long time];
11
but in Enfance
Sarraute dismisses this interpretation as a facile evasion (for which she
holds herself responsible), and presents the autobiographical account as
the only one based on a proper consideration of and insight into the inci-
dent. So that although the two versions of the episode at issue here are
both non-ctional, the autobiographical text makes a stronger truth
claim than the journalistic account on the grounds of its greater
reectiveness:
Ctait si commode, on pouvait dicilement trouver quelque chose de plus
probant: un de ces magniques traumatismes de lenfance . . . [. . .] jy croyais
. . . par conformisme. Par paresse. (E, p. 8)
[It was so convenient, it would have been dicult to nd anything more con-
vincing: one of those magnicent childhood traumas . . . [. . .] I believed it,
out of conformism. Out of laziness. (p. )]
And the narrator goes on to say that it is only recently that she had been
inclined to recall the elements of her childhood and as a result has been
surprised to discover on closer scrutiny that as far as this one goes she
feels (felt) no anger or resentment towards the discouraging uncle, but
rather, immense relief at having been delivered from the spell exerted by
a certain kind of writing (the kind she associates with her mother). In its
small way this episode serves to contribute to the implication that Enfance
is the only true and reliable account of events that have been presented
elsewhere in adulterated or misleading form. Indeed, Sarraute seems
more than willing to aunt the accuracy of even the purely material and
circumstantial recall of events, supplying her editors and commentators
with testimonies from those who were witnesses or participants in the
same events, as if to underline the truthfulness of their depiction in
Same dierence: reprise and variation :
Enfance.
12
In all these ways, then, the autobiographical texts dierence
from broadly similar scenes in other ctional (but also non-citonal)
accounts is a crucial factor in its claim to be true.
The problems start, however, when this principle is extended to other
moments where the link between the autobiographical text and a
ctional counterpart remains perceptible but is more tenuous. For
example, it may be justiable in the light of what Enfance relates
about the signicance of Mark Twains The Prince and the Pauper or
Lazhechnikovs Maison de glace to give particular weight to allusions to
these texts which appear elsewhere in Sarrautes work. It may also be
plausible to see a model for M. and Mme Martereau in the Florimond
couple. But Sarraute herself seeks to put a brake on this tendency by
confronting it head on over the question of Babouchkas role as a model
for the idealised grandmother in disent les imbciles. The question is
raised, acknowledged and then severely circumscribed and limited to
incidentals:
[Elle na p]as grand-chose de commun avec celle [la grand-mre] que tu as
montre plus tard dans lun de [tes livres] . . .
Rien que la jupe moelleuse, les tavelures qui parsment le dos de ses mains et,
sur son annulaire, au niveau de larticulation ce petit creux . . . Mais ses cheveux
sont dun jaune terne, ses yeux ne sont pas pareils de lmail bleu, ils sont dun
vert jauntre un peu dteint, elle a un grand visage blafard, dassez gros traits
. . . il est impossible de la modeler en une mignonne statuette bleue et rose de
grand-mre de conte de fes . . . (pp. ..6)
[ Not a great deal in common with the one you later described in one of your
books . . .
Nothing but the soft skirt, the scattering of liver spots on the back of her
hands, and, on her ring nger, that little hollow at the joint . . . But her hair is
a dull yellow, her eyes are not like blue enamel, they are a slightly faded, yellow-
ish green, she has a large, pale face, with rather heavy features . . . its impossi-
ble to mould her into the dainty little blue and pink statuette of a fairy-tale
grandmother (pp. .oo:)]
However, in other instances, not only is the link not mentioned, but it is
at best inconclusive, since the emotional character of the autobiograph-
ical version of the event is quite dierent from its ctional counterpart.
13
When Natacha goes with her father to the Jardin du Luxembourg she
persuades him to buy her a balloon as proof that he loves her; but Portrait
dun inconnu records memories of a similar episode where the father obsti-
nately refuses his young daughter the same indulgence. And whereas
Gisle in Le Plantarium recalls a nightmare event in the same Jardin du
: Genre and dierence
Luxembourg when a happy moment is interrupted by a scream from her
mother and the sight of a sinister and foul-smelling vehicle lumbering
towards her (P, p. 6 [p. 6]), the same setting with trees in ower, damp
grass sparkling in the sunshine, the vibrating air, and even the compo-
nent of happiness, is used in Enfance for Natachas experience of the
bonheur which expressly excludes precisely the sort of horror that is
conveyed by Gisles experience in the same situation (E, pp. 66 [pp.
6]). It is impossible to know what to make of these echoes where the
combination of similarity and dierence between the autobiographical
and the ctional texts entails a dierence in emotional cast which may
or may not carry signcance for the parallel scene: does Natachas
moment of happiness constitute a comment on Gisles memory of
horror? or is Gisles nightmare lurking in the margins of Natachas
ecstasy? The implications of these parallels remain thoroughly incon-
clusive.
More inconclusively still, what are Sarrautes readers who, as we have
seen, are treated as having memories of her earlier texts, to make of the
appearance in Ici, published some twelve years after Enfance, of a frag-
ment which seems to echo (right down to the insistence on the word
always) the scene where Natachas father teaches her the days of the
week? In Enfance the fragment is part of a section which evokes idealised
memories of Natachas birthplace in Ivanovo and a series of very posi-
tive, and perhaps equally idealised images of her father as an
aectionate and attentive parent (E, p. [p. .]). In Ici the equivalent
fragment is part of the concluding meditation on Pascals phrase Le
silence ternel de ces espaces innis meraie [The eternal silence of
those innite spaces lls me with terror] with all its solemnity and awe
(I, p. :q [p.:6o]). The thematic context in each case seems strong
enough to be capable of providing a frame or implied interpretive
comment on the other, but nothing dictates which could or should deter-
mine the reading of the other. Most importantly, since Ici postdates
Enfance, the possibility of reading the autobiographical as the true or cor-
rective version of the ctional one is ruled out here.
There is sameness and dierence in equal measure in these scenes, but
in a form which precludes using one as the ground or yardstick for the
other. Issues of truth no longer seem pertinent and we are left simply
with two versions of the same material: two equipollent variations on a
single theme, rather than an autobiographical truth against which we
might measure a ctional distortion.
Same dierence: reprise and variation :
\\ni \+i oxs: nrrr+i +i ox \xn ni rrrnrxcr
Looked at in this way, the link between Ici and Enfance seems not to be
specic to the relation between lived experience and ctional representa-
tions, but recalls instead other kinds of link between dierent texts by
Sarraute. Indeed, Sarrautes work is increasingly marked by a network
of echoes and repeated motifs that run from one text to another, and
sometimes from one genre to another. For example, many of the plays
appear to take their inspiration from a phrase in one of the novels, or to
contain moments which rework a similar moment in the ction. So that,
for example, Les Fruits dor would seem to contain the sources for Le
Mensonge, Le Silence and Cest beau.
14
Or again, the phrase Cest bien, a
[Its very good, that] rst appears in Entre la vie et la mort, and is revived
for its full, deadly eect to become the kernel of the play Pour un oui ou
pour un non.
15
In the case of the phrase mon petit [my dear], the shift
of direction is reversed and it is LUsage de la parole (:q8o) which picks up
and develops the words which had already gured in Cest beau (rst
broadcast as a radio play in :q.).
16
In all these cases we are dealing with
something more than instances of mere repetition. As Arnaud Rykner
argues, the dierent circumstances provided by theatre as opposed to
prose ction allow certain possibilities contained within the original
ctional phrase to be explored and developed in ways that only the
conditions of theatrical dialogue make possible or more precisely, the
phrase and its associated sous-conversation allow theatrical dialogue itself
to be pushed to new and previously unexplored limits.
17
This kind of textual reworking from one genre to another is not
conned to Sarrautes theatre. Les Fruits dor (:q6) takes its plot structure
from a discussion in the critical essay Ce que voient les oiseaux (:q6)
where Sarraute comments on the tendency of critical enthusiasms to rise
and fall:
Il arrive de temps en temps quune sorte de vertige, explicable chez des gens
occups tant lire, prenne les plus couts des critiques: ils se mettent tout
coup crier au chef-duvre, porter aux nues un ouvrage dnu de toute
valeur littraire, comme le prouvera, quelque temps aprs, lindirence, puis
loubli o sa faiblesse ne manquera pas de le faire glisser.
[Every now and then we see our most inuential critics in the grip of a kind of
vertigo, which is understandable in people who spend so much time reading:
but then they suddenly start talking about masterpieces, and to praise to the
skies a work which is devoid of all literary value, as will be proven some time
later, by the indierence and then the oblivion into which its weakness will
inevitably see it slide.]
18
:6 Genre and dierence
And she goes on in the essay to mention the fate of those who resist the
mass hysteria of critical orthodoxy and whose uncomfortable situation
is explored in considerable detail by the novel. But beyond these inter-
generic transpositions, many of the texts are linked by one text providing
the germ for a subsequent one. So, for example, the emergence of a
solid, conventional character, Dumontet, at the end of Portrait dun
inconnu gives Sarraute a starting point for her next novel, Martereau, where
an equivalent gure is gradually dismantled, as if Martereau himself
had been reworked from the same substance as Dumontet, and the
refurbishment of the weekend house planned in Portrait dun inconnu had
been handed over to M. and Mme Martereau for its nal execution in
the novel which succeeded it. Or again, in an interview Sarraute sug-
gests that both Les Fruits dor and Entre la vie et la mort constitute two separ-
ate developments of a single kernel contained in Le Plantarium. In
response to a suggestion from Germaine Bre that her work had seen a
change of emphasis and direction after Le Plantarium towards an explicit
concern with the author, his relationships with others, with himself, with
his work, Sarraute replies as follows:
Certainly. The idea came to me when I was writing Le Plantarium; I had just
completed a passage about Germaine Lemaire, the writer, and I thought that it
would be very interesting to do something about the literary text itself. I thought
of Les Fruits dor. It would be interesting to take a book, which would become
the true hero of the novel, and follow its destiny as it rises and falls and espe-
cially to examine the tropisms which its publication generates around it. And
then afterwards I thought that it would be interesting to concentrate on the
writer as such, not on a writer.
19
What is signicant about this comment is that Sarraute sees the change
of direction in the work that follows Le Plantarium as having its source in
Le Plantarium, and to be the eect of a return to one of its key moments:
the episode where the writer confronts her own writing, a moment
which, incidentally, itself portrays a kind of return as Germaine Lemaire
rereads her work.
This notion of writing as return or reprise is implied on a number of
occasions in Sarraute. The writer in Entre la vie et la mort is depicted at the
end of the novel returning to words he had written earlier, and the life
or death quality of his writing depends not on the worth of his rst draft
but on the way in which he revises it as he revisits the original: too much
polish and the writing will be dead, too much complacency on his part,
and the result could be the same. Extending this idea, one could also see
each of Sarrautes texts as emerging from a series of returns to its
Same dierence: reprise and variation :
opening scene, since she claims that the genesis of each of her works is
provided by its inaugural moment:
Je commence toujours par travailler ce qui constituera le dbut du livre. Une
fois que jai trouv les premires phrases, je men sers comme tremplin pour la
suite, et jai besoin de ce tremplin.
[I always begin by working on what will form the beginning of the book. Once
I have found the rst sentences, I use them as a springboard for the rest, and I
need this springboard.]
20
It is as if each section of a text were a variation on its introductory
theme, and each phase of the work both a return to and a development
of its original motif. In other words, the movement of return is integral
to both the writing and the construction of the Sarrautean text, and the
repeated motif not just a link between separate works or even separ-
ate genres within the overall corpus, but a powerful structuring device
within a single work.
21
Much of what Sarraute herself has said on this subject implies that
the original kernel has an inexhaustible plenitude and that this explains
and justies its generative role. For instance, her comments on Vous les
entendez?, a novel which very obviously derives from its opening scene,
whose ramications and potential the whole book is devoted to explor-
ing, imply that the scene is marked by just such an abundance:
Le pre dit: Vous les entendez? et partir de cette phrase se dveloppe tout le
livre. Ces mots servent de catalyseurs. Ils sont comme un germe qui arrive l et,
tout autour, commence grossir quelque chose qui devient norme et se
dveloppe presque malgr moi. (Qui tes-vous?, p. q)
[The father says: Do you hear them? and the whole book develops out of that
sentence. The words are catalysts. They are like a seed which appears, and then
all around, something begins to grow which becomes enormous and develops
almost in spite of me.]
This view is endorsed by many critics of Sarrautes work, and Andr
Allemand, for example, describes this opening scene as ce moment aux
mille et une rsonances, [. . .] ce moment total, parfait, que je qualierai
de potique, parce quil se compose de toutes les extensions, quil est fait
la fois de tout ce qui est vcu et de la part dimaginaire et de rve quim-
plique ce vcu [the moment with a thousand and one resonances, [. . .]
this total, perfect moment, which I would call poetic, because it is com-
posed of all its implications, and because it is made up both of every
aspect of the lived experience and of all the imagination and dreams
that this lived experience implies].
22
Sarrautes writing is presented in
:8 Genre and dierence
both these comments (her own and Allemands) as having as its purpose
the revelation of the fullness of the originary moment. Each reprise
would then be like another dip into a brantub, bringing further
conrmation of the abundance contained in the texts starting point.
Another gloss on this aspect of her writing comes in an interview
where Sarraute suggests that this technique is literatures equivalent of
the multiple perspectives of Cubism:
Dans lcriture, on ne peut le faire que dune manire successive. Alors je suis
oblige, quand un mot, une expression provoque chez nous une impression
globale, je suis oblige de prendre ce mot et montrer une nouvelle sensation que
a provoque, et une nouvelle, et encore une autre, alors que, en ralit, nous le
ressentons tout fait globalement. Cest la fois que nous percevons tout a.
[In writing, one can only do it in succession. So when a word or an expression
produces an overall impression in us, I have to take that word and show a new
sensation that it produces, and then another new one, and then another,
whereas in real life, we sense it completely as a whole. We perceive it all at the
same time.]
23
The originary moment is an overall impression whose implications can
be fully appreciated only by repeatedly returning to it so as to draw them
all out.
This structure can also be seen on a small scale in a number of epi-
sodes where a single phrase provides a kernel around which the writing
weaves a series of arabesques, each one bringing out another aspect of
it. The phenomenon of variation as repetition with a dierence here
becomes constitutive of whole episodes. For example, in Entre la vie et la
mort, in the scene where the writer comes to tell his father that his book
has been accepted for publication, the fathers sceptical response,
Combien ta-t-on pris pour publier a? [How much did they take o
you to publish that?], is repeated six times over, each repetition being
accompanied by a dierent sous-conversation and a dierent set of images
which present yet another dimension of the situation: the boy in short
trousers who, having been the despair of his teachers and psychologists
comes home from school one day with a string of good marks to show;
the prodigal son kneeling at his fathers feet and asking for his forgive-
ness and his blessing; the deserter returning to his ranks who nds that,
instead of being met with the open arms he had hoped for, his way is
barred by his former companions who have their ries trained on him;
and so on. There is indeed a presumption here of an abundance in the
scenes central motif which this sequence of variants serves to reveal, like
the dierent facets of a Picasso portrait.
Same dierence: reprise and variation :q
But these returns can also signal a serious anxiety. Franoise Asso has
argued eloquently that Sarrautes repetitions revisit an original trauma
which is never identied, but which constantly resurfaces as menace in
the ceaseless return of the tropism itself.
24
And there is a further source
of anxiety implied by the reprises of Sarrautes writing in the sense that
repetition can become an indication of insuciency rather than abun-
dance in relation to the original moment. Plenitude may be undermined
rather than enhanced by the dierences in each of the perspectives
which supposedly elucidate it, each one replacing rather than expand-
ing the one that precedes it. Dierence between turns out to be a much
more disquieting dierence within.
Indeed a good many of Sarrautes reprises focus on an impression
that is itself more divided than it is global. I shall be looking in more
detail at some of these divided impressions later on, but one relatively
straightforward instance of variation as inner division can be seen in
those scenes where a single episode is narrated from the point of view of
more than one of the characters participating in it. Le Plantarium con-
tains a number of instances of these scenes since it combines a multiple
narrative perspective (unlike the rst two novels) with a cast of clearly
distinguished characters who inhabit a self-consistent and identiable
world (unlike the texts which succeed it).
The most striking of these multiply narrated episodes is the one where
Pierre goes to visit his sister Berthe to talk about Alains wish to take over
her at. The two versions of the scene Berthes and Pierres follow
straight on from each other as if to highlight the dierence in their two
experiences of the encounter (P, pp. :qq.: [pp. ..] and pp.
.:.8 [pp. .68] respectively). Each one contains much the same
spoken dialogue and each includes Pierres gesture of turning down the
corner of the rug by his feet. But the sous-conversations of each of the
two versions dier enormously from each other, and this turns Pierres
visit into a completely dierent event for each of them. These dierences
are chiey local, since the scene is not presented as having a single overall
signicance for either character, and neither character has his or her
character underwritten or conrmed by the episode.
The divide which separates the two characters is apparent from the
outset since for Berthe much happens before the conversation ever starts,
whereas for Pierre this moment is so insignicant that nothing is said of
his experience of it. When Pierre enters the narrative, he is focusing on
the upturned corner of the rug and as he straightens it out, the gesture
is described as bringing him great relief (quel soulagement, quel apaise-
:6o Genre and dierence
ment, p. .:6 [what a relief, how soothing (p. .)]). For Berthe observ-
ing the gesture it appears as the sign of an evasion or a wilful distraction
from the matter in hand (p. .o [p. .q]). And although the two charac-
ters are acutely sensitive to each other throughout the scene, their inter-
pretations of each others thoughts and responses are widely divergent.
Where Berthe imagines Pierre (with some exasperation at his defeatism)
as an old man in a worn raincoat admiring his handsome son, resplen-
dent on horseback as he passes by without seeing his father (pp. .o
[p. .:]), Pierres own image of his paternal role at the same point in
their exchange is expressed in another imaginary scenario which is quite
dierent in avour from Berthes. Instead of seeing his son as a resplen-
dent horseman, he pictures Alain in the dock as a pale and shifty delin-
quent and himself as the loyal father defending his son against the
juridical opprobrium being heaped upon him (p. .: [p. .6])). The
signicance of both inner and outer realities (Pierres role as a father, his
gesture of turning down the corner of carpet) is quite dierent for each
of the characters concerned.
Moreover, although each of them is acutely aware of being the object
of the others interpretation, the picture that each has of the others view
of him- or herself is very dierent from the one that the other actually
has. So, for example, Pierre imagines Berthe remembering the way he
once lit a cigarette after taking leave of his grandmother (p. .: [p. .]),
but the memory does not feature at all in Berthes mind. Equally, when
Berthe senses that her brother is nurturing a momentary grudge, she
assumes quite erroneously that she is its object (p. .o [pp. .]). The
two accounts of this episode end on the same words as Berthe asks Pierre
to tell Alain to come and see her, to which Pierre replies that it is for
Berthe and Alain to work things out between themselves. Here again,
the signicance of this exchange is very dierent for each of the two
characters: for Berthe it is a sign that she has come up against something
hard (elle a but sur quelque chose de dur, p. .: [she has stumbled
against something hard (p. ..)]) which then explodes; whereas for
Pierre it carries his new-found sense of freedom and well-being, une
exquise sensation de lgret, un got dautrefois quil avait oubli, de
libert, dinsouciance . . . (p. ..) [an exquisite sensation of lightness,
an old hankering, which he had forgotten, for freedom, for insouciance
(p. .68)]. Mutual self-awareness, a common dialogue, a common per-
ception of gesture turn out to have little that is really mutual or common
between the two characters concerned. They inhabit very dierent
mental universes, and the presence of these common motifs, far from
Same dierence: reprise and variation :6:
implying a wealth of signicance which it takes both perspectives to
bring out (as in a Picasso portrait), are instead divided and undercut by
the hugely divergent roles and interpretations that they acquire in each
of the two perspectives in which they gure. The kernel of sameness
which the motif might potentially constitute is transformed into an
index of incommensurable dierence when it appears as reprise in the
second version.
25
The plenitude of the truth which the reprises seek to
reveal, is undermined by the gesture of repetition itself. The dierent
perspectives of Berthe and Pierre do not so much complete or comple-
ment each other, as underscore a dierence that lies at the very heart of
experience.
The tropism which for Sarraute constitutes the common substance of
human experience is in practice powerfully associated with divergence,
and perhaps nowhere more so than in those contexts where it gures as
reprise. One of the most striking instances of this paradox is to be found
in the four versions of the scene between M. and Mme Martereau in
Martereau. Collectively these four versions testify to the universality of the
tropism by revealing its presence in a gure who had challenged that uni-
versality by appearing to be immune to this kind of response. But at
the same time this collective proof goes hand in hand with radical
dierences of interpretation as to the form that the responses take in
each of the four accounts. The rst version presents a Martereau in
broadly condent mood as the result of an unexpectedly pleasant
evening with the narrators uncle; the second, a Martereau nervously
aware of certain hostile undercurrents between himself and his new
business acquaintance; the third, a Martereau whose every gesture has
been dictated by his more powerful interlocutor and who then discov-
ers that he has been set up as a straw man; and the fourth has its centre
of gravity in the impoverished relationship between the Martereau
couple which each of the preceding scenes had already presented in
dierent lights. This is a fundamentally unstable world where nothing
can be known with certainty, and where nothing ever remains identical
to itself be it, as here, the sound of a door closing, a man walking up
and down and whistling, a woman clearing a table, and a few spoken
words. As Martereau himself observes, cest une chose qui arrive assez
souvent, quon peroive dun mme objet, la fois plusieurs images trs
direntes (p. ..) [this is something that happens quite often, we per-
ceive several very dierent images of the same object (p. ..6)].
Sarrautes textual reprises have the eect of turning these dierences
into a disturbing internal divergence; the dierences between her variants
point ultimately to a dierence within the single object they depict.
:6. Genre and dierence
i x+rnx\r nnr\cnrs
In the last part of this exploration of Sarrautes variants, I should like to
consider the implications of two sets of reprises in her work where diver-
gence takes the form both of textual variants and of variant interpreta-
tions, these being provided by the characters who speak and hear the
words which constitute the central motif in each case. In each instance
there proves to be an internal dierence within words themselves whose
capacity for proliferation of meaning, far from spelling abundance, leads
to frustrated communication and a consequent rift between the charac-
ters involved. Linguistic dierence in these episodes is something very
dierent from the dierential operations which determine the signifying
systems, such as Saussurean linguistics or structural anthropology, which
I examined in Chapters : and ..
The rst of these examples is that of the phrase Si tu continues,
Armand, ton pre va prfrer ta sur [If you carry on like that,
Armand, your father will prefer your sister]. It appears in Entre la vie et
la mort and is taken up again and developed at length in Ton pre. Ta
sur in LUsage de la parole. I have already discussed the way in which the
words themselves are presented as opening up a breach between the
characters who are referred to by them (in Chapter . above). But over
and above this division, in both versions of the scene, the narrator who
brings the utterance to the attention of his interlocutors has his inten-
tions frustrated by their refusal to interpret the phrase in the way he sees
it; and on both occasions this lack of a shared interpretation leads the
narrator too to experience a breach, namely one between himself and
the recipients of his comments.
In Entre la vie et la mort, the phrase Si tu continues, Armand, . . . is
oered by the writer as an example of the kind of perfectly ordinary
words which nevertheless get inside one and produce insidious and
noxious eects: ils ont quelque chose, ces mots, de trs particulier . . . Ils
restent l, en vous, toujours en activit, ils entrent de temps en temps en
ruption, ils dgagent des vapeurs, des fumes . . . (EVM, pp. 6)
[these words have something very peculiar about them . . . They remain
inside you, still active, from time to time they begin to erupt, they emit
fumes, smoke . . . (p. .)]. His interlocutors, however, fail to see the words
this way, and the writers attempt to share his experience and to estab-
lish a common understanding of the phrase in question, collapses. Not
only are his listeners unable to perceive the utterance in the light in
which the writer presents it, but a further breach opens up as they turn
his emphasis on the banality of the phrase into a sign that he spies on
Same dierence: reprise and variation :6
their ordinary, everyday conversations and takes notes on their verbal
misdemeanours:
Mais on ne peut donc plus parler, on ne peut pas prononcer en votre prsence
les mots les plus ordinaires . . . Vous tes terrible. Vous tes l nous pier . . .
tout enregistrer, tout critiquer . . . (p. )
[Its impossible for anyone to speak any more, one cant use the most ordinary
words in your presence . . . Youre awful. Youre there spying on us . . . noting
everything down, criticising everything . . . (p. )]
The writers appeal for a shared reponse meets with refusal, suspicion
and accusation.
The reprise in LUsage de la parole is presented explicitly as a second
attempt to get the writer-narrators experience across:
coutez-les, ces paroles . . . elles en valent la peine, je vous assure . . . Je vous les
avais dj signales, javais dj attir sur elles votre attention. Mais vous naviez
pas voulu mentendre . . . [. . .] Mais il faut tout de mme, pardonnez-moi, que
jy revienne, je dois absolument les reprendre encore une fois. (UP, p. q)
[Listen to these words, theyre worth it, I assure you . . . I had already pointed
them out to you, Id already drawn your attention to them. But you didnt want
to listen to me . . . [. . .] All the same, and I hope youll forgive me, I really must
come back to them, I absolutely have to take them up once again. (p. )]
He goes on to justify his return to the phrase by invoking its plenitude,
and he denies that he is merely repeating himself. The problem for the
writer, according to him, is not the insuciency of his subject matter (the
phrase), but of the means available to him for doing justice to it:
je peux tre court, cest vrai, devant une si grande abondance, devant un tel
embarras du choix. Oui, court de moyens, et cest un manque qui peut devenir
parfois exasprant, insupportable. (p. q)
[I may well be scraping the bottom of the barrel, its true, in the face of such
abundance, such an enormous choice. Yes, scraping the bottom of the barrel,
short of resources, and its a deciency which can sometimes become exasper-
ating, unbearable. (p. 6)]
Having given his account of what this key phrase contains for him, the
writer feels momentarily that he has succeeded in getting it across to his
listeners: Ah cette fois, il me semble que nous y sommes. Vous tes avec
moi cette fois, vous avez peru comme moi . . . Je vois vos sourires com-
plices . . . (p. q) [Ah, this time I do believe weve got there. Youre my
accomplices this time, youve noticed, like me . . . I see it by your smiles
. . . (p. )]. However, he then discovers that his audience have read the
:6 Genre and dierence
phrase quite dierently from him, focusing on the emotional blackmail
it contains rather than on the way it allocates family roles. So that once
again the phrase, supposedly so pregnant with positive potential,
diverges in unforeseen and unwelcome ways; and instead of constitut-
ing an object of common understanding it sets speaker and listeners at
cross purposes with each other. Words here prove to have an unmaster-
able division at their heart, which far from serving the writers purpose,
places him at odds with those whom he seeks to make his accomplices.
The repetition in LUsage de la parole, which was intended to heal the rift
that had opened up in Entre la vie et la mort, simply ends up by producing
a further one.
The other almost obsessive reprise which is also based on a failure
of shared understanding, turns on the phrase Debout les morts! [Let
the dead arise!] Like Si tu continues, Armand . . . it makes its rst
appearance in Entre la vie et la mort, and Sarraute returns to it three times
more, twice in disent les imbciles and one further time in Ici. However,
each of the scenarios in which it features reverses the situation associ-
ated with Si tu continues, Armand . . . in the sense that they focus on a
single gure who is presented as the source of an apparently wilful mis-
understanding of the topic of the conversation going on around him. In
each version this character interrupts a discussion by suddenly calling
out Debout les morts!, much to the consternation of the people he is
with:
Mais quest qui lui prend? Quest-ce que cest? Pourquoi, tout coup? Certains,
moins craintifs, se rapprochent, tendant le cou, levant la tte vers lui . . . Matre,
nous parlions des Maures. Des vnements en Mauritanie.
[But whats got into him? What is it? Why, all of a sudden? Some of them, the
less fearful ones, come closer, craning their necks, looking up towards him . . .
Matre, we were talking about the Moors [Les Maures]. Things happening in
Mauritania.]
In each case the solitary gure refuses to be corrected, and he obstinately
pursues his own idiosyncratic reading of the word:
Il na pas lair de les entendre, il garde son visage g. Son il lourd, but, xe
implacablement quelque chose devant soi. Il lve son bras. Il fait claquer son
fouet: Debout les morts! Debout les morts! (EVM, p. :)
[He appears not to hear them, he keeps the same xed expression on his face.
His heavy, obstinate eye stares implacably at something in front of him. He
raises his arm. He cracks his whip: Let the dead [les morts] arise! Let the dead
arise! (p. :q)]
Same dierence: reprise and variation :6
The scenes in disent les imbciles (pp. 8o . and :.) and Ici (pp. q8q) turn
on exactly the same misunderstanding (Maures [Moors] heard as
morts [dead]), and Sarrautes insistent return to it makes one wonder
what is at stake for her in this rather forced homophony, and in the obsti-
nate gure who simultaneously introduces dierence into words and
denies it. That is to say, he understands les morts where the others mean
les Maures, but he is adamant in hearing only his own version of the
homophone:
Debout les morts! parce que cest mon bon droit. Mon bon plaisir. Debout les
morts! [. . .] Cest prendre ou laisser. Et qui oserait laisser? Qui ici aurait le
courage de courir le risque?
Personne. Ils sont mats. Dresss. (pp. :)
[Let the dead arise! Because its my will and my right. My will and my plea-
sure Let the dead arise! [. . .] Take it or leave it. And who here would dare leave
it? Who here would have the courage to take the risk?
Nobody. Theyve been brought to heel. Trained. (pp. :qo)]
The Master imposes his own variant as the sole version of the word.
In each text the scene has a slightly dierent colour and emphasis, but
it retains certain constants beyond the core motif of misconstrual: in
Entre la vie et la mort the interruption is a sign of the writers autocratic
belief in his unique destiny and importance; in disent les imbciles the
Matre gure is trapped in an image of this kind which is imposed on
him by others, his every protest being turned by them into conrmation
of his role; and in Ici the oppression lies in the phrase itself, rather than
in its speaker, as it hijacks the conversation and kidnaps the Moors who
were its original subject. But aside from these dierences of emphasis,
all three texts present the episode as one of dierence violently denied
in its very assertion. The Moors are each time ousted by the dead who
claim exclusive rights of possession over the word:
il ny rien faire, Maures est maintenu prisonnier . . . Debout les morts!
Debout les morts! . . . il a t vid de son sens et enchan Debout qui injecte
en lui un sens inconnu, dconcertant, impntrable . . . qui le rend tout fait
mconnaissable . . . son large au est serr, comprim en un o troit . . . mais
on a beau essayer de dsserrer ltau . . . Ce nest pas morts, morts na rien
voir, cest des Maures quon parlait . . . il ny a pas moyen de le dlivrer. Il
faut sy rsigner, il est irrcuprable . . . (I, p. :o8)
[theres nothing to be done, Maures [Moors] has been taken prisoner . . . Let
the dead arise! Let the dead arise! . . . it has been emptied of its meaning and
shackled to Arise which injects it with an unknown, disconcerting, impenetra-
ble meaning . . . which makes it completely unrecognisable . . . its open au is
:66 Genre and dierence
squashed and compressed into a narrow o . . . but its hopeless to try and loosen
the noose . . . It wasnt morts [the dead], morts have nothing to do with it,
it was the Maures [Moors] that we were talking about. Theres no way to
deliver it. Well have to resign ourselves, its irretrievable . . . (p. q)]
Like the phrase Ton pre. Ta sur, the scene where the Moors are
evacuated by the dead demonstrates that words contain unforeseen and
unmasterable internal dierences, and that they are the cause of isola-
tion and oppression as each side argues that only his version counts.
There is a curious contradiction in Sarrautes reprises between a view of
dierence as a mark of the inexhaustible wealth of potential contained
within certain scenes and utterances, and the stories that these scenarios
tell. For here dierence appears as the source of either betrayal and
abandonment (the case with Ton pre. Ta sur), or of oppression and
tyranny (as with Debout les morts!). The experience of the characters
in these scenes suggests that rather than constituting a sign of plenitude
and completion, the dierences contained within a single entity serve to
isolate and divide.
Yet, this breach in the heart of both words and things is evoked again
and again in Sarrautes writing as its necessary origin. The writer in Entre
la vie et la mort oers the overheard words about fathers and sisters to his
audience as an example, precisely, of something containing that vital if
troubling ssure:
On dirait quune paroi tout dun coup sest ouverte. Par la fente quelque chose
sest engour, venu dailleurs . . . Un ailleurs tait l, quon ne souponnait pas,
ou plutt quon seorait dignorer, on faisait semblant, pour la commodit,
vous comprenez . . . Et cest l, a presse de toutes parts, cela sinltre . . . (EVM,
p. 6)
[Its as if a wall had suddenly opened up. Through the crack something that has
come from somewhere else has surged through . . . There was somewhere else
which we never suspected, or rather which we tried to ignore, we pretended,
you understand, for the sake of convenience. And its there, its pressing in on
all sides, its seeping through . . . (pp. .)]
The emergence of an elsewhere (of a somewhere dierent) through a
breach (la fente) in the uniformity of the same is repeatedly associated
with the quality that makes the dierence between life and death in
writing. It is through this split in the smooth surface of things that the
tropism seeps, and it is the recurrent origin of Sarrautes own writing,
as she makes clear when she describes the eect that rereading Tropismes
(the only text, she claims, that she ever returns to as a reader) has on
her:
Same dierence: reprise and variation :6
Il me semble alors que je revois les premires nes craquelures dans le mur
pais, tout lisse, qui autrefois mentourait et do un jour quelques gouttes dune
substance inconnue pour moi avaient ltr. Depuis, je nai fait que meorcer
dlargir ces craquelures.
[I feel as if I were once again seeing the rst ne cracks in the thick, smooth
wall which used to surround me and from which a few drops of a substance
unknown to me seeped through one day. Since then all I have done is try to
enlarge those cracks.]
26
Writing is both a capturing of what seeps through these cracks and, as
the opening scene of Enfance demonstrates, it is also, if need be, a sacri-
legious tear in the too-smooth surface of existence.
Questions of sameness and dierence have led us from the question
of generic aliation, which concerns dierences between, to the issue of
the dierence within, which is an issue about writing itself, regardless of
generic categories. Writing for Sarraute depends crucially on this inter-
nal divergence in things; but it is poised in an uneasy equilibrium
between the necessity of this kind of dierence and the equal necessity
of an absolute endorsement from its readers who are urged to feel the
same about the dierence within. Readers like those depicted in the
scenes we have been examining who cannot or will not see that
dierence, but only the smooth uniformity of the surface of life, intro-
duce a dierent kind of dierence which can only end in the dierence
of betrayal and isolation. The divergence opened up by the unwanted
dierence in words denies the dierence of the internal breach in exis-
tence, and in doing so leads ultimately to silence and the end of writing.
This is what the closing words of Ton pre. Ta sur suggest:
Ton pre. Ta sur . . . je le rpte avec vous . . . vraiment, ne dirait-on pas que
quelque chose . . . l . . . Ton pre. Ta sur? Non? rien ne bouge? la paroi est
toute lisse, immobile. Ton pre. Ta sur? . . . Vous devez avoir raison . . . il ny
a rien . . . rien qui puisse bouger, souvrir, pas de paroi. (UP, p. 6.)
[Your father. Your sister . . . I repeat it with you . . . really, wouldnt you say that
something . . . there . . . Your father. Your sister? No? is there nothing moving?
the wall is quite smooth, immobile. Your father. Your sister? . . . You must be
right . . . theres nothing . . . nothing that might move, open up, no wall. (p. 6o)]
Without the readers replication of the writers vision of the dierence
at the heart of things, that dierence vanishes. Even the things vanish,
and writing itself falls silent.
:68 Genre and dierence
r\n+ i \
Conclusion
Death and the impossible dierence
At the end of the last chapter we saw that when a dierence is opened
up in the heart of things it becomes possible for writing to capture the
scrap of living substance which is its goal. But even this internal
dierence is liable to dier from itself; for it is just as often associated with
death in Sarrautes writing as it is with life. The breach that introduces
internal dierence is itself split between being a sign of life and a portent
of death. In these concluding pages I shall be exploring the particularly
volatile forms of dierence that cluster around the issue of death in
Sarrautes work, and hope in the process to demonstrate both how
intractable that cluster is, and also how imbroiled it is with the writing
project itself. In short, by the intensity of its focus on issues of sameness
and dierence, rupture and continuity, loss and identication, death
proves to be the ultimate testing ground for Sarrautes writing.
Though it does not gure as a large-scale theme in her work death is
nonetheless a topic which repeatedly surfaces in it, and moreover very
often in association with the appearance of a breach in things. From
Tropismes to Ici, the tiniest ssure can provide a conduit for the intoler-
able menace which death represents for Sarraute:
par la fente minuscule, une menace indnissable, quelque chose dimplacable,
dintolrable, qui est l, derrire, toujours prt sinsinuer, sinltre sournoise-
ment . . . (PI, p. :)
[through the tiny ssure, an undenable threat, something implacable, intoler-
able, that exists on the other side, always ready to insinuate itself, keeps stealth-
ily seeping through (p. :.)]
Fifty years later, the gap opened up by a sudden blank in the narrators
memory produces the same panic-stricken eect as this breach does on
Le Vieux. And his response, like that of so many of Sarrautes charac-
ters before him, is to seek to plug the crack and seal o the menace which
in the end always turns out to be the menace of death:
::
refermer ce qui peut nimporte o, nimporte quel moment souvrir, laisser
passer, se rpandre ici ces exhalaisons . . . le soue, lhaleine de labsence irr-
parable, de la disparition . . . (I, p. .)
[closing o what, no matter where, at no matter what moment, may open up
and let those vapours in and spread themselves here . . . the exhalation, the
breath of irreparable absence, of extinction . . . (p. .)]
Sarrautes characters live constantly with the barely repressed anxiety
that the world around them will split apart and expose them to the
possibility of the irreparable absence and the obliteration which
is death. The frantic activity of these characters is, according to
Sarraute, no more than a perpetually renewed attempt to avoid con-
fronting this fear. This is how she puts it in an interview with Carmen
Licari in :q8::
La peur de la mort est tellement forte quon ne peut pas laborder de front. En
face de cette angoisse atroce que donne chaque tre humain la mort, on biaise.
Comme fait par exemple dans Portrait dun inconnu le vieux, quand il xe son
esprit sur la barre de savon coup ou sur le trou dans le mur. La mort, cest la
rupture, le scandale, la destruction, la perte totale. On soccupe de la perte dun
object, dun trou derrire la baignoire, mais ce ne sont que des approches, cest
une faon de vivre moindres frais la chose atroce et invivable.
[The fear of death is so strong that one cannot confront it head on. Faced with
the excruciating anguish that death causes in all human beings, one prevar-
icates. As Le Vieux in Portrait dun inconnu does when he xes his mind on the
bar of soap which has been cut or on the hole in the wall. Death is rupture,
scandal, destruction, total loss. You busy yourself with the loss of an object, or
a hole behind the bath, but these are only approximations, they are a way of
living the excruciating and unlivable thing in a more bearable form.]
1
And talking to Simone Bemussa on the same subject she says:
Je crois toujours que quand nous cherchons un objet qui a disparu, nous prou-
vons le mme sentiment que devant le nant ou la mort qui nous hantent ce
moment-l et, comme nous ne pouvons pas laronter, nous nous accrochons
la disparition de lobjet. Quand lobjet reparat, si nous lavons retrouv, cest
comme si la mort, la disparition de tout scartait pour un instant. (Qui tes-vous?,
p. :)
[I always think that when we are looking for an object which has disappeared,
we experience the same feeling as when we are confronted with the nothingness
or the death which we are haunted by in those moments, and as we cant face
up to it, we cling to the disappearance of the object. When the object turns up
again, if weve found it, its as if death and the disappearance of everything had
been cast aside for a moment.]
:. Conclusion
The angoisse which death elicits in us is so intolerable that human
activity becomes a necessity that enables us to create bearable forms of
anxiety as a displacement or a substitute for this fundamental and
unbearable one. Le Vieux in Portrait dun inconnu xes on the damage
caused by a leaking pipe; the narrator of Ici desperately searches for a
series of forgotten names (Philippine, Tamaris, Arcimboldo);
2
and the
rest of us, says Sarraute, frantically turn out drawers or empty bins
looking for a mislaid letter or a book whose loss could be more easily
borne than the annihilation that is death, but which in any case unlike
death may be cancelled by the recovery of the missing object.
The words for this threat are, however, far from taboo and they pro-
liferate in Sarrautes writing as faille, ssure, craquelure, fente, caillure, goure,
creux (just to take page : of Portrait dun inconnu [defect, ssure, crack,
abrasion, abyss, hole (p. :.)]), or trou, ouverture, rupture, vide, vacance, bance,
interstice (to take the rst texts of Ici) [hole, opening, breach, void, space,
gap, chink], as if to remind us of the omnipresence of a threat which is
always ready to burst through every conceivable form of breach. What
this reversal of the signicance of the Sarrautean split (now as much a
sign of death as of life) suggests is that the heroism of the writers sacri-
legious gesture as s/he rips apart the intolerably smooth surface of
things has as its counterpart the need to contain the equally intolerable
menace that leaks through the resulting breach.
The workings of dierence in this domain are, however, more com-
plicated still. For although the internal breach is both the source of
writings living substance and the conduit for the reminder of death,
death itself proves to be an equally divided entity: in one guise it gures
as the ssure in the smooth surface of things; but it is also equated with
that smooth surface itself. So once again, we nd that in this universe,
the essentials of existence even when they take the absolute-sounding
forms of irreparable absence and total loss seem to be unnervingly
incapable of remaining self-identical, and death can turn out to be both
a breach and a uniform continuum.
Death is already present in this second guise on the very rst page of
the rst of Sarrautes Tropismes, as the ils who are its subject mysteri-
ously seep into being from between the at surfaces of the buildings
along the street, les faades mortes des maisons (T, p. ::) [the dead
faades of the houses (p. :)]. Smooth faades are dead faades, and
Sarrautes rst novel, Portrait dun inconnu, is brought to a close when a
deadly smoothness begins to seal up the worlds surfaces so that they no
longer oer any purchase for the narrators tropistic sensibilities:
Death and the impossible dierence :
Tout sapaisera peu peu. Le monde prendra un aspect lisse et net, puri. Tout
juste cet air de sereine puret que prennent toujours, dit-on, les visages des gens
aprs leur mort.
[Little by little everything will calm down. The world will take on a smooth,
clean, puried appearance. At most that air of serene purity which people are
always said to have after death.]
However, perhaps the deadliest manifestation of death in this guise lies
in the way that it smooths over even the terror of death itself, reducing
the event that Sarraute describes as rupture and scandal to a moment
that is like any other.
Aprs la mort? . . . Mais non, ce nest rien, cela non plus . . . Mme cet air
un peu trange, comme ptri, cet air un peu inanim disparatra son tour
. . . Tout sarrangera . . . Ce ne sera rien . . . Juste encore un pas de plus franchir.
(PI, p. .:.)
[After death? . . . But that, too, is nothing either . . . Even that slightly strange,
petried look, that slightly lifeless look will disappear in its turn . . . It will be
nothing . . . Just one more step to be taken. (p. ...)]
In one sense, then, there seems to be nothing more appalling about
death than the blandness with which some people seem capable of
approaching it. The grandfather in Tropismes \iii tyrannises his grand-
son with his oppressive insistence on his own future disappearance; Le
Vieux in Portrait dun inconnu torments a sulky teenage acquaintance with
a parade of equanimity at the prospect of his own demise (PI, pp. ::.:
[pp. :::q]); Martereaus stories of his fathers calm encounter with
death leave the narrator surer than ever that Martereau inhabits a
dierent universe:
Il est mort de sa belle mort, il sst teint de vieillesse quatre-vingt-neuf ans
entour de ses petits-enfants et arrire-petits-enfants. [. . .] Tout est pour le
mieux. La mort apprivoise vient comme une bte familire se faire donner de
bonnes tapes amicales, manger dans notre main. (M, p. 86)
[He died a beautiful death, he passed on as the result of old age at eighty-nine
years old, surrounded by his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. [. . .]
Everything is for the best. Death is tamed and comes like a familiar animal to
receive our friendly pats, to eat out of our hand. (pp. 8.)]
And at the end of Ton pre. Ta sur, the narrative of the various
breaches opened up by the mothers words comes to a close as the gaps
are sealed up (rien ne bouge? la paroi est toute lisse, immobile
[nothings moving? the wall is quite smooth, immovable]), and to such
a degree that, as we saw at the end of the last chapter, even the smooth
surface in which they rst appeared vanishes:
: Conclusion
Ton pre. Ta sur? . . . vous devez avoir raison . . . il ny a rien . . . rien qui
puisse bouger, souvrir, pas de paroi. (UP, p. 6.)
[Your father? Your sister? . . . you must be right . . . theres nothing . . . nothing
that could move, open up, theres no wall. (p. 6o)]
The smoothness of the surface has become the blandness of its non-
existence; and as it disappears, what vanishes with it is the very possibil-
ity of opening up any dierence within. If writing encounters a defeat
in Sarraute which, as we have seen from these examples, it regularly
does it is in the face of this deadliest form of death: its acceptance as
banality, rather than terror at its awful prospect.
Death, then, needs to dier from itself in order that terror may at least
counter its eects as banality. And indeed, the narrators resistance to Le
Vieuxs charade of acceptance in the face of death is described by him
as a kind of triumph, which takes the form, precisely, of a reassertion of
the old mans terror. The old man aunts his equanimity, but, says the
narrator, Cela navait pas pris avec moi. By not being taken in by the
smooth surface of the charade and its accompanying platitudes (plati-
tudes being language that is, literally, all smooth surface), the narrator is
able to reach beyond it, to penetrate the protective armoury of banality
sported by Le Vieux and to reach something living within:
Javais russi saisir, dpassant de larmure solide quil stait fabrique et o il
se croyait bien en sret, quelque chose de vivant sa main qui se tendait vers
moi furtivement. Javais saisi sa main au vol. Je le tenais.
[I had succeeded in piercing the heavy armour which he had created for himself
and behind which he felt safe, and I had caught hold of something alive his
hand which he was holding out to me furtively. I had seized his hand in mid-air.
I held him tight.]
Paradoxically, the living thing comes from the narrators ability to make
contact with the old mans panic as he lies awake in the grip of what he
(Le Vieux) calls mes rveils de condamn mort (PI, p. :.) [the awak-
enings of a condemned man (pp. ::q.o)]. This is not, however, a
predatory appropriation of anothers experience, since it is presented
precisely as a form of contact: the narrator has taken the old mans out-
stretched hand, and what follows (the imagined night-time scene) is
oered as the narrators response to the implicit appeal in the old mans
gesture. Through imaginative identication the narrator is able to share
Le Vieuxs confrontation with what is the reverse of sharing, since for
Sarraute death is primarily rupture and loss: La mort, cest la rupture
[. . .], la perte totale [Death is rupture [. . .], total loss].
This question of separation and loss is central to the way death
Death and the impossible dierence :
appears in Sarrautes work. The absence of the elusive name in the rst
text of Ici opens up a gulf which threatens to separate the nameless
gure from the narrator, as if the gure himself were already dead and
irretrievably lost. Separation and death are synonymous, and this is why
the breach has so urgently to be lled by recovering the name:
ce quil a laiss derrire lui, cette ouverture, cette rupture disjoint, disloque, fait
chanceler . . . il faut absolument la colmater, il faut tout prix quil revienne,
quil sencastre ici nouveau, quil occupe toute sa place . . . (I, pp. :::.)
[what it has left behind here, this opening, this breach separates, dislocates,
makes everything wobble . . . it must be lled in, it must at all costs come back,
embed itself here once again, take its full place . . . (pp. ::8)]
When the name does nally come back to mind and the hole is lled, a
lost contact is restored between the narrator and Philippine, just as the
phrase Bonjour Philippine itself evokes a restored union, as Barbara
Wrights note in the English translation explains:
In the days when families of all nations used to play parlour games, one of the
most charming was Bonjour Philippine.
When the nuts and the fruit were brought in after a meal, if someone took
an almond with twin kernels, he (or she) kept one half and gave the other to a
fellow player. In the French version played in the rst decades of this century,
the recipient had to be a family member of the opposite sex. When the two
players next met, the rst to hold out his kernel and say Bonjour Philippine
became the winner of the game and was entitled to a modest present from the
loser. (p. :)
The threat of separation associated with death is ultimately staved o
here because the name succeeds in eecting a double union: between the
narrator and his old friend, and metaphorically, between the twin
kernels of the almond.
The two guises in which death appears in Sarrautes work the
smooth surface and the terrifying breach both imply or impose separa-
tion. Or rather, the terror implies it and, as we saw in the ending of
Portrait dun inconnu, the smooth surface imposes it. But in using one form
of death as an antidote to the threat of the other, there is a risk that one
form of separation will merely replace the other. In this instance the
union eected by the name Philippine comes very close to restoring an
excessive smoothness in things:
Philippine . . . Philippine . . . encore et encore Phi-lip-pine . . . ses euves dli-
cieux rpandent la certitude, lapaisement . . . tout autour est stable, bien clos,
bien lisse, parfaitement uni . . . pas le moindre interstice par o puisse sinltrer
ici, souer, faire osciller, trembler . . . (I, p. :)
:6 Conclusion
[Philippine . . . Philippine . . . again and again Phi-lip-pine . . . its delightful
exhalations spread certainty, reassurance . . . everything around is stable, nicely
enclosed, nice and smooth, perfectly sealed [uni], not the slightest interstice
through which anything could seep in here, inltrate and cause wavering, trem-
bling . . . (p. .o)]
The ambiguity of the French word uni (meaning both joined and
smooth) sums up this risk perfectly.
Sarrautes response to this dilemma is, at one level, simply to accept
it, allowing her writing to follow its dynamic by alternately opening up
the breach through which terror seeps, and sealing it up again. And
indeed, the chapters in this book have sought to chart the various ways
in which the breach of dierence in general is alternately opened and
closed by Sarrautes writing strategies. But in addition to this alternation,
the dilemma as it is experienced in relation to death also takes a partic-
ularly paroxystic form to which Sarraute returns again and again in her
writing, and in which that writing seems peculiarly implicated: the
moment of death. This moment is repeatedly evoked in Sarrautes work,
both in extenso and as more eeting allusion. The most extensive explora-
tions of this moment are the death of Prince Bolkonski in Portrait dun
inconnu and that of Chekhov in Ich sterbe in LUsage de la parole, both of
which focus on the last moments of a dying man. But other, briefer
moments leave their mark: one of the characters in Entre la vie et la mort
refers to the death of the poet Flix Arvers who used the last remnants
of the life and strength within him to correct the pronunciation of the
nun nursing him.
3
In Enfance the narrator recalls Natachas predilection
for the death scene in Uncle Toms Cabin, and mentions that the copy she
owned as a child contained an illustration of loncle Tom mourant et en
face, sur lautre page, la description de sa mort [Uncle Tom dying, and
on the other page, opposite, the description of his death]. And as if to
underscore the emotional signicance of this scene for the child, she
notes of these two pages of the book that Elles taient toutes deux
lgrement gondoles, des lettres taient eaces . . . elles avaient t tant
de fois trempes de mes larmes (E, p. q) [They were both slightly crin-
kled, some of the letters were obliterated . . . they had so often been
soaked by my tears (p. o)]. The essay De Dostoevski Kafka contains
a discussion of Meursaults responses at his mothers funeral, and men-
tions by contrast the reaction of one of the characters in Virginia
Woolf s The Years as she awaits the announcement of the death of her
mother. And the same essay ends with an account of the death of
Kafkas K. at the hands of the two gentlemen in The Trial. (It also
Death and the impossible dierence :
appears in Martereau.) The Unknown Man in the painting in Portrait dun
inconnu seems to the narrator to be frozen in the moment of violent
death:
On aurait dit quici leort, le doute, le tourment avaient t surpris par une cat-
astrophe soudaine et quils taient demeurs l, xs en plein mouvement,
comme ces cadavres qui restent ptris dans lattitude o la mort les a frapps.
(PI, p. 8o)
[It was as though all eort, all doubt, all torment had been overtaken by a
sudden catastrophe and had remained as they were, frozen in action, like
corpses which are petried in the position they were in when death struck. (p.
8)]
What follows in this important scene is therefore contained within this
cataclysmic instant. In Entre la vie et la mort the experience of writing is
described as an encounter with a hitherto unknown extremity, but which
might be ce que doivent dans les tout derniers instants se dire les
mourants (EVM, p. 6) [what the dying must say to themselves in their
very last moments (p. 6)]. And at the end of the same book this ulti-
mate moment is evoked again and again in connection with writing
when the test of the authenticity of the writers work is compared to a
mirror held over the mouth of a dying person: est-ce que cela se dgage,
se dpose . . . comme sur les miroirs quon approche de la bouche des
mourants . . . une ne bue? (p. :) [is it exuding, settling . . . as on the
mirrors people hold in front of the mouths of the dying . . . a ne
vapour? (p. :8)]
The frequency and the intensity of these scenes in Sarrautes work
brief though many of them are suggest a proccupation with death as
paroxysm, thus foregrounding the divided, knife-edge quality of the
moment. In each case, the dying person is portrayed in extremis, between
life and death, between death as imminent and death as completed
event, between menace and xity. A second characteristic of many of
these scenes is to be found in the way in which they make possible a
moment of powerful contact between the dying person and another.
This aspect is particularly prominent in the deaths of Prince Bolkonski
and Chekhov. In the case of Prince Bolkonski, the moment of his death
allows the xity of the mask he wore in life briey to dissolve before it
acquires the xity of cet air de sereine puret que prennent toujours,
dit-on, les visages des gens aprs leur mort [that air of serene purity
which people are always said to have after death] described on the
novels last page. And in that instant of dissolution, he gives his daugh-
:8 Conclusion
ter the only sign of the love he has for her, allowing his feelings to break
through the surface within which he had always contained them. And
he does so by a last, desperate attempt at speech:
Ce nest quune fois, une seule, juste au dernier moment, quand il allait mourir,
quelle a vu, tandis quelle se penchait sur lui pour essayer de saisir les paroles
quil balbutiait en remuant pniblement sa langue paralyse ctait peut-tre
douchenka, ma petite me, ou peut-tre droujok, mon amie, elle navait pu
saisir, ctait si extraordinaire, si inattendu ce nest qu ce moment quelle a
vu pour la premire fois le masque se dtendre, se dfaire. (PI, p. 6.)
[There was only one time, one single time, at the very last moment, when he
was about to die, that, as she leaned over him to try to catch the words he was
stammering, moving his paralysed tongue with diculty perhaps it was
douchenka, my little soul, or droujok, my little friend, she had not been able to catch
it, it was so extraordinary, so unexpected it was only in that instant that for the
rst time she saw the mask relax, collapse. (pp. 6)]
The extremity of death breaks down the barrier between father and
daughter, and in revealing the father to be as prone to the impulses of
the tropism as anyone else, it also breaks down the barrier that divides
him from the rest of humanity. For it is the moment of death that makes
it possible to reconstruct the true nature of the relations between father
and daughter, and to see that the Princes mask had been his defence
against the complex and disabling threads in which his daughters
attachment to him seemed to trap him. In other words, this ultimate
moment reveals the universality of the tropism which it is the goal of
Sarrautes writing to uncover and convey.
But contact is implied in these moments in yet another way, for a good
many of them contain an acknowledgement of the necessity on the part
of the narrator or writer to follow the dying person to the limits of his
experience through the exercise of his creative imagination. Just as the
narrator of Portrait dun inconnu presents the account of the terrors of Le
Vieux as the product of his own imaginative recreation, so too he under-
scores the imaginative status of his evocation of Prince Bolkonskis
death: ce ne sont l, je le sais, que de vagues et assez grossires supposi-
tions, des rveries (p. 6) [all this is the vaguest and crudest of specula-
tions, so much day-dreaming (p. 6)]. The truth about the tropism is
always arrived at by imaginative identication, whether it be the living
substance of the Le Vieuxs panic, the inner life behind Martereaus
faade, or the identicatory response that Sarraute constantly seeks to
elicit from her readers. In this way the contact bridging the catastophic
rift that is imminent in death is experienced both by the characters
Death and the impossible dierence :q
portrayed in the text (the Prince and his daughter) and by the writer in
his imaginative identication with the last moments of the dying person
an identication which the reader is in turn invited to emulate. The
purpose of writing is to reach behind the smooth surface of the mask in
the hope of discovering a longing for contact behind it. And in so doing,
a circuit of communication is created that transcends the breach in the
instant when it is about to become irrevocable rupture. The moment of
death is a challenge to the creative imagination and a test of its worth.
The account of the death of Chekhov in Ich sterbe is also presented
as a creative identication that goes beyond the surface appearance of
the event as recorded at the beginning of the text:
au dernier moment, ayant auprs de son lit sa femme dun ct et de lautre un
mdecin allemand, il sest dress, il sest assis, et il a dit, pas en russe, pas dans
sa propre langue, mais dans la langue de lautre, la langue allemande, il a dit
voix haute et en articulant bien Ich sterbe. Et il est retomb, mort. (UP, p. :.)
[at the last moment, with his wife on one side of his bed and a German doctor
on the other, he raised himself, he sat up, and he said, not in Russian, not in his
own language, but in the other mans language, the German language, he said
aloud, articulating clearly: Ich sterbe. And he fell back dead. (p. )]
The narrators eorts in this short text are devoted to reconstructing
what lies behind these bare facts. In the rst instance, the words a form
of medical self-diagnosis addressed to a German colleague are por-
trayed as the dying mans antidote to his inward disintegration, the
imminent inner void. And the commentary is ascribed directly to
Chekhov himself in the rst person, as if to suggest that the narrator has
already succeeded in establishing an identicatory bond with his subject
whose inner discourse he is able to hear:
Ce qui en moi otte . . . ageole . . . vacille . . . tremble . . . palpite . . . frmit
. . . se dlite . . . se dfait . . . se dsintgre . . . Non, pas cela . . . rien de tout cela.
Quest- ce que cest? Ah voil, cest ici, a vient se blottir ici, dans ces mots nets,
tanches. Prend leur forme. Des contours bien tracs. Simmobilise. Se ge.
Sassagit. Sapaise. Ich sterbe. (pp. ::)
[That part of me which is oating . . . sagging . . . wavering . . . trembling . . .
palpitating . . . quivering . . . splitting . . . crumbling . . . disintegrating . . . No,
not that . . . none of any of that. What is it? Ah, this is it, its here, its coming
to nestle here, in these clear impenetrable words. Takes their shape. Well-
dened contours. Becomes immobilised. Solidies. Abates. Subsides. Ich sterbe.
(p. 6)]
The utterance asserts (medical) order over inward chaos. But at the same
time it is also a message sent from a point of utter extremity:
:8o Conclusion
Ich sterbe. Un signal. Pas un appel au secours. L o je me trouve il ny a pas
de secours possible. Plus aucun recours. Vous savez comme moi de quoi il
retourne. Personne mieux que vous ne sait de quoi je parle. Voil pourquoi cest
vous que je le dis: Ich sterbe (p. :)
[Ich sterbe. A signal. Not a call for help. Where I am now there is no possible
succour. No further recourse. No one knows better than you what I am talking
about. You know as well as I do what is happening. That is why it is to you that
I am saying: Ich sterbe. (p. )]
Chekhovs appeal to the doctor is as powerful a plea for the contact of a
shared understanding as that of the Unknown Man to the narrator in
Portrait dun inconnu. And both pleas are made in similar situations of iso-
lationandcataclysm. For Chekhov, Ichsterbe are the onlywords capable
of reaching across the gulf that is opening up between himself and his
companions. He knows that the language that he shares with his wife can
no longer cross that divide: pas nos mots nous, trop lgers, trop mous,
ils ne pourront jamais franchir ce qui maintenant entre nous souvre,
slargit . . . une bance immense . . . (p. :) [not our sort of words, they
are too light, too soft, they would never be able to cross what is now
opening up, yawning, between us . . . an immense chasm. . . (p. 8)].
But in reaching across the chasm and transmitting the signal,
Chekhov seems to have come dangerously close to the appalling
equanimity which Sarraute presents elsewhere as the alternative to
terror in the face of death. The articulation of these self-referring dying
words is not only an appeal to his companions, but it also constitutes an
almost superhuman attempt on Chekhovs part to be adequate to the
experience of his own death. The words amount to a metaphorical self-
entombment, as he seals himself up beneath his own gravestone:
Je rassemble toutes mes forces, je me soulve, je me dresse, je tire moi, jabaisse
sur moi la dalle, la lourde pierre tombale . . . et pour quelle se place bien exacte-
ment, sous elle je mallonge . . .
[I muster all my strength, I raise myself, I sit up, I pull towards me, I lower the
agstone onto myself, the heavy tombstone . . . and to make sure that it falls in
exactly the right place, I lie down underneath it . . .]
For the narrator, however, everything depends on hearing in these words
something other than a stoical acceptance of the seamless closure of
entombment:
Mais peut-tre . . . quand il soulevait la dalle, quand il la tenait au-dessus de lui
bout de bras et allait labaisser sur lui-mme . . . juste avant que sous elle il ne
retombe . . . peut-tre y a-t-il eu comme une faible palpitation, un peine per-
ceptible frmissement, une trace inme dattente vivante . . . (p. :)
Death and the impossible dierence :8:
[But perhaps . . . as he was raising the slab, when he was holding it above him
with outstretched arms and was about to lower it onto himself . . . just before
he fell back under it . . . was there maybe something like a faint palpitation, a
barely perceptible quivering, a minute trace of living hope . . . (pp. q:o)]
The narrators speculation makes the words a form of communication
between Chekhov and the narrator as the latter opens himself up to the
possibility of hearing these faint, palpitating resonances within the utter-
ance. Just as the self-sucient medical verdict was punctured for the nar-
rator by hearing in it an address powerfully directed at the one person
who might be able to pick up the message (the German doctor), so the
self-entombment is breached by the tiny crack that remains before the
slab settles into place, and through which a channel of contact with
other beings might ow. The narrators attention to the words and his
imaginative identication with their speaker eventually succeed in
endowing Chekhovs utterance with a communicative thrust strong
enough to aect anyone who might hear them. And by the end of the
text the words are presented as having acquired a force which is associ-
ated much more with their transmission and their communicative eects
than with the content which rst came under the narrators scrutiny.
These eects are described as des cercles qui vont slargissant quand
lancs de si loin et avec une telle force [ils] tombent en nous et nous
branlent de fond en comble (p. :8) [circles which continue to expand
when, propelled from such a distance and with such force, these words
fall on us and shake us to the very depths of our being (p. :o)].
The fraught, paroxystic, impossible moment of Chekhovs death
summons the writer to perform his own impossible task: to open up the
banalities of its surface appearance, breaching it with his imaginative
energies to hear more than the bare constation it contains. But also to
throw a line across the ensuing rift by means of words that restore a
contact between all the parties involved: the dying Chekhov, the German
doctor, Chekhovs wife, the narrator and ultimately the reader. At every
stage writing is required both to breach and to connect, with all the risk
that is entailed by each.
These contradictory imperatives are a nal reminder that dierences
in Sarraute are impossible ever to settle. They can be neither xed nor
erased; and they are as unbearable as they are necessary. Death is both
the ultimate horizon for this tourniquet of impossibilities and its most
acute embodiment.
:8. Conclusion
Notes
i x+nontc+i ox
::. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Pour un nouveau roman (Paris: Gallimard, Collection
Ides, :qo), p. . First published in :q6. Translated in Snapshots and
Towards a New Novel by Barbara Wright (London: Calder & Boyars, :q6), p.
6:.
:.. Page numbers in square brackets refer to published translation where avail-
able (occasionally modied). Translations otherwise mine.
:. Andr Gide, Les Faux-monnayeurs (Paris: Gallimard, Livre de poche, :q66),
Part III, Chapter . First published in :q., some twelve years after the
publication of Du Ct de chez Swann. Translated as The Counterfeiters with
Journal of the Counterfeiters by Dorothy Bussy and Justin OBrien (New York:
Knopf, :q:)
:. Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots, (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q). First published in
:q6.. Translated as Words by Irene Clephane (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
:q6).
:. Marcel Proust, la Recherche du temps perdu, edited by Jean-Yves Tadi (Paris:
Gallimard, Bibliothque de la Pliade, :q8q), vol. IV, p. 6:o. Translated as
Remembrance of Things Past by C.K. Scott Moncrie, Terence Kilmartin and
Andreas Mayor (London: Chatto & Windus, :q8:), vol. III, p. :o8q.
:6. Andr Gide, Journal des Faux-monnayeurs (Paris: Gallimard, :q.), p. .8.
:. Jean-Paul Sartre, Quest-ce que la littrature?: Situations, II (Paris: Gallimard,
:q8), p. :o. Translated as What is Literature? by Bernard Frechtman
(London: Methuen, :q6), p. .
:8. Gilles Deleuze, Dirence et rptition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
:q68), p. :. Translated as Dierence and Repetition by Paul Patton (London:
Athlone Press, :qq), p. ix.
:q. Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique gnrale, edited by Tullio de Mauro
(Paris: Payot, :q8), p. :. Translated as Course in General Linguistics by Roy
Harris (London: Duckworth, :q8), p. :. My emphasis.
:o. Honor de Balzac, Avant-propos to the Comdie humaine, edited by Marcel
Bouteron (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothque de la Pliade, :q), vol. :, pp. ,
.
::. Roland Barthes, Lactivit structuraliste, Essais critiques, .nd edition (Paris:
ditions du Seuil, :q:), pp. .:.o), p. .:. The essay was rst published in
:8
:q6. Translated as Critical Essays, by Richard Howard (Evanston,
Northwestern University Press: :q.), pp. .::.
:.. Jacques Derrida, La dirance, Marges de la philosophie (Paris: ditions de
Minuit, :q.), pp. :.q, p.. Translated as Dirance in Margins of
Philosophy by Alan Bass (Brighton: Harvester Press, :q8.), pp. :. (p. ).
:. See Jacques Derrida, De la Grammatologie (Paris: ditions de Minuit, :q6),
passim. Translated as Of Grammatology by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, :q6).
:. Andrew McKenna has, however, made a powerful case for mapping
Derrida onto Girards theory of the social articulation of dierence. He
argues that What Girard does is thematise the moral impulse of
deconstruction in its ever more subtle detections of unconscious violence.
This is an impulse all too often ignored by both advocates and adversaries
of deconstruction, which uncovers violence in texts only to concern itself
thereafter with textuality and not with violence. See Andrew J. McKenna,
Violence and Dierence: Girard, Derrida and Deconstruction (Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, :qq.), p. .
It is worth noting, however, that one of the justications that Derrida
adduces for the word dirance is precisely the need to render the sense of
dierence as dirend: le mot dirence (avec un e) na jamais pu renvoyer
au direr comme temporisation ni au dirend comme polemos. See La
dirance in Marges de la philosophie, p. 8.[the word dirence (with an e) can
never refer either to direr as temporisation or to dirends as polemos) (p. 8)].
Similarly, Barabara Johnson suggests that criticism and dierence are
hard to distinguish from one another since so often it is impossible to know
whether something constitutes description or disagreement, information or
censure. Barbara Johnson, The Critical Dierence (Baltimore, Md.: Johns
Hopkins University Press, :q8o), p. x.
The fact remains, however, that although all this points the way towards
a social dimension in deconstructive thinking, it is still little more than a
possibility contained within the thought, and never becomes its chief focus.
:. V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, translated by Ladislav
Matejka and I.R. Titunik (New York and London: Seminar Press, :q), pp.
86:.
:6. J.L. Austin, How to do Things with Words, edited by J.O. Urmson and Marina
Sbis, .nd edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, :q6),
pp. q8:oo.
:. Jean-Franois Lyotard, Le Dirend (Paris: ditions de Minuit, :q8), p. :.
Translated as The Dierend: Phrases in Dispute by Georges Van Den Abbeele
(Manchester University Press: :q88), p. .
:8. Or more precisely, Girard argues, with its absence. I shall be discussing these
ideas in more detail in Chapter .. See Ren Girard, La Violence et le Sacr
(Paris: Bernard Grasset, :q.). Translated as Violence and the Sacred by Patrick
Gregory (Baltimore, Md. and London: Johns Hopkins University Press,
:q).
:8 Notes to pages ,
:q. Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxime sexe (:qq) (Paris: Gallimard, Collection
Ides, :q68), vol. :, p. :6. Translated as The Second Sex by J.M. Parshley
(London: Jonathan Cape, :q), p. :6.
.o. Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing, History and the West (London:
Routledge, :qqo), p. :. The rst person to articulate this sort of approach
was Edward Said in his Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
:q8). See also Race, Writing and Dierence, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, :q86). In his
Introduction, Gates argues that Race is the ultimate trope of dierence
because it is so very arbitrary in its application (p. ).
.:. For example, as she says in her preface to Lre du soupon: Mon premier livre
contenait en germe tout ce que, dans mes ouvrages suivants, je nai cess de
dvelopper (Lre du soupon, p. q). [My rst book contained the seeds of all
the things that in my subsequent work I have never stopped developing.]
: ni rrrnrxcr \xn ni ssrxsi ox
::. Lre du soupon, p. 8. The preface to the English translation of these essays
appeared the year before the publication of the :q6 preface to the second
French edition of Lre du soupon and is not entirely identical with it. Where
there is no equivalent in the English translation I have supplied my own (as
here).
:.. In his review of Lre du soupon, Mauriac describes Martereau as ce livre
tonnant, [. . .] lun des romans les plus nouveaux que nous ayons lus depuis
longtemps [this astonishing book, [. . .] one of the most original novels that
I have read for a long time], and he praises in particular its richesse psycho-
logique sans prcdent dans linnitsimal [its unprecedented psycholog-
ical richness in the minutest details]. And yet he reads the essays as an attack
on psychology by Sarraute: en croire Mme Nathalie Sarraute dans Lre
du soupon (Gallimard), le mot psychologie serait de ceux quaucun auteur
aujourdhui ne pourrait entendre prononcer son sujet sans baisser les yeux ni
rougir [If we are to believe Mme Nathalie Sarraute in The Age of Suspicion,
the word psychology is one of those that no author today can hear used
about him without looking away and blushing]. But, he is driven to argue, cest
[avec] lassurance dun crivain se dsolidarisant haute voix de ce dont il
se sait complice, sinon mme coupable [it is with the assurance of a writer
claiming in public to dissociate himself from the thing that he knows he is
complicitous with, if not actually guilty of ]. (Claude Mauriac, Nathalie
Sarraute et le nouveau ralisme, Preuves, :., (:q) pp. 68: (p. 6)). This
essay was later published in book form in LAlittrature contemporaine (Paris:
Albin Michel, :q8), in a revised version which removes the misreading a
revision which would seem to conrm the fact that a misreading is precisely
what we are dealing with.
:. Mary McCarthy, Hanging by a Thread in The Writing on the Wall (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, :qo), pp. :.88 (p. :8). The review rst
Notes to pages .o. :8
appeared in The New York Review of Books (: July :q6q). For a report on the
proceedings leading up to the award of the Prix International de
Littrature, see the article by Bernard Pivot, Le Figaro littraire, : May
:q6, p. .
:. See Stephen Heath, The Nouveau Roman: A Study in the Practice of Writing
(London: Elek, :q.), pp. 866, and Nathalie Sarraute, Ce que je cherche
faire, OC, p. :oo.
:. Saussure, Cours de linguistique gnrale, p. :66.
:6. See Jean-Franois Lyotard, Le Dirend. Lyotard introduces the problem of
le dirend in terms of the absence of any frame that could encompass
two conicting positions: la dirence dun litige, un dirend serait un
cas de conit entre deux parties (au moins) qui ne pourrait pas tre tranch
quitablement faute dune rgle de jugement applicable aux deux argu-
mentations (p. q) [As distinct from a litigation, a dierend [dirend] would
be a case of conict between (at least) two parties, that cannot equitably be
resolved for lack of a rule of judgement applicable to both arguments (p.
xi)]. The basis for judgement is ultimately a linguistic one, and, as we shall
see, the lack of a common language is a frequent problem for Sarrautes
characters.
Barbara Johnson has argued that dissent is inseparable from discrimina-
tion: the very fact that it is impossible to know whether something consti-
tutes description or disagreement, information or censure is perhaps the
most problematic and critical dierence of all. Barbara Johnson, The
Critical Dierence, p. x.
:. See Interview de Nathalie Sarraute, by Grant E. Kaiser, Roman .oo, ,
(:q8), pp. ::8. (pp. ::q.o); interview with Nathalie Sarraute broadcast
on France Culture, February :q88; Rencontre: Nathalie Sarraute, interview
with Isabelle Huppert, Cahiers du cinma, :, (:qq), pp. 8: (p. :o); and the
interview cited below in note 8, where a kibbutznik is reported by Sarraute to
have said to her, ici, aussi, il y a beaucoup de tropismes [there are a lot of
tropisms here as well]. I have also summarised remarks made to me in
conversations with Nathalie Sarraute.
:8. Nathalie Sarraute au kibboutz, Propos recueillis par Erwin Spatz, La
Quinzaine littraire, :6: October :q6q, pp. :.: (p. :).
:q. See, for example, the rst interview she ever gave (to Gabriel dAubarde)
in Les Nouvelles littraires, o July :q, p. , where she states that le franais
fut ma premire langue [French was my rst language]. Or her interview
with her German translator, Elmar Tophoven, in Nathalie Sarraute et ses
traducteurs europens, in Actes des premires assises de la traduction littraire (Arles
.8) (Arles: Actes Sud, :q8), pp. :.q, where again she says, Le franais
a t ma premire langue [French was my rst language], an assertion
which she supports with the comment that Je suis venue en France lge
de deux ans . . . Jtais lcole maternelle lge de trois ans . . . (p. :o)
[I came to France at the age of two . . . I was in kindergarten at the age of
three . . .].
:o. For this see the Folio edition of :q8 and the Pliade edition of the uvres
:86 Notes to pages .o
compltes. The slip was drawn to her attention in a letter sent by a reader.
::. Nathalie Sarraute: Qui tes-vous? Conversations avec Simone Benmussa (Lyon: La
Manufacture, :q8), pp. :o:, (hereafter referred to as Qui tes-vous?). See
Chapters and below for further discussion of the issue of sexual
dierence in Sarraute.
:.. Roman Jakobson, Linguistics and Poetics, Language in Literature
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap and Harvard University Press, :q8), pp. 6.q
(p. :). Original emphasis.
:. See Paul Valry et lEnfant dlphant, Lre du soupon, and Ce que je
cherche faire. I shall be discussing Sarrautes choice of the role of rene-
gade at greater length in Chapter 6, Criticism and the Terrible Desire to
Establish Contact.
:. Interview with Nathalie Sarraute, Virginia Woolf ou la visionnaire du
maintenant, Les Lettres franaises, .q June July :q6:, pp. :, (p. ). She
makes the same point again in an interview nearly . years later when she
says: On dit parfois que mes textes font penser ceux de Virginia Woolf,
mais je pourrais presque dire que son travail est loppos du mien. Il est
exacte quelle se sert dimages et de trs belles images potiques , mais
les consciences quelle dcrit sont des consciences ouvertes dans lesquelles
le monde sengoure. Chez moi, elles ne sont [pas] passives, elles sont tou-
jours en train de sagiter comme des mes en peine, de chercher, dans la
bataille, la lutte et leort. See Carmen Licari, Entretiens avec Nathalie
Sarraute, Francofonia, q (:q8), pp. :6 (p. ::) [People say to me sometimes
that my texts remind them of Virginia Woolf s, but I could almost say that
her work is the very opposite of mine. It is true that she uses images and
very beautiful poetic images , but the consciousnesses which she depicts are
consciousnesses that are open to the world and into which the world is
absorbed. In my work they are not passive, they are always in a state of
agitation like souls in torment, always searching for something, engaged in
conict, struggle and eort].
:. Jean Blot, Nathalie Sarraute: une ne bue, La Nouvelle Revue franaise, :88,
(:q68), pp. ::::8 (p. ::6).
. stn rc+i \i +v \xn i xni s +i xc+i ox
::. De Dostoevski Kafka, p. .
:.. This is a point which has been made by a number of critics of Sarrautes
work. See for example, Celia Britton, Reported Speech and Sous-conver-
sation, Romance Studies, . (:q8), pp. 6qq. Arnaud Rykner writes: LAutre
est toujours llment fondateur qui met en branle la dynamique du moi. Je
ne suis que dans la mesure o je suis en relation, Nathalie Sarraute (Paris: di-
tions du Seuil, :qq:), p. :q [The Other is always the founding element which
sets the dynamic of the self in motion. I am only to the extent that I am in
relation].
The term intersubjectivity is one that I shall use for convenience here,
although in a sense, subjects involved in the human relations portrayed by
Notes to pages .o :8
Sarraute never seem to achieve anything more than a purely phantasmatic
notion of the subjectivity of the other. Strictly speaking, intersubjectivity
should imply a mutual availability of the minds and intentions of all parties
to each other. Or as The Oxford Companion to Philosophy denes it: the status
of being somehow accessible to at least two [. . .] minds or subjectivities.
It thus implies that there is some sort of communication between those
minds; which in turn implies that each commmunicating mind is aware not
only of the existence of the other but also of its intention to convey informa-
tion to the other. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted
Honderich (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, :qq), p. :.
:. I shall follow Nathalie Sarraute in using the masculine pronoun as the
unmarked form, and will be exploring her reasons for this preference in
Chapter .
:. Nathalie Sarraute: Mon thtre continue mes romans . . ., La Quinzaine
littraire, :6 December :q8, pp. (p. ).
:. Journal of Katherine Manseld, denitive edition, edited by J. Middleton Murry
(London: Constable, :q), pp. .::6. The passage dates from September
:q.o.
:6. For further discussion of territorial imagery in Sarraute see R.J. Nelson,
Territorial Psychology in Nathalie Sarrautes Les Fruits dor, Symposium,
(:q8:.), pp. o..
:. Spatial metaphors for subjectivity become increasingly widespread in
Sarraute as she moves further and further away from concepts of identity
and towards a notion of subjectivity simply as a space that one inhabits. e.g.
lintrieur, o je suis . . . Qui tes-vous?, p. :o [On the inside, where I am
. . .].
The implications of the title of Ici are borne out by the texts themselves.
Franoise Asso uses the expression le lieu des tropismes [the place of the
tropisms] to describe the place about which and from where Sarraute
writes her work, identifying LUsage de la parole (:q8o) as the moment when
Nathalie Sarraute began to write dici pour dire ce qui se passe ici [from
here in order to say what happens here]. See Franoise Asso, Le lieu des tro-
pismes, in Nathalie Sarraute: Portrait dun crivain, edited by Annie Angremy,
(Paris: Bibliothque nationale de France, :qq), pp. (p. ).
:8. For example, PI, p. :: [p. :q]. See also Chapter below.
:q. Ren Girard, La Violence et le Sacr, pp. 8q and 8: [pp. and :], respectively.
:o. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (:q66) (London: Routledge, :qq).
::. See radio interview with Danile Sallenave, voix nue, broadcast on
France-Culture, .. March :qq., p. : of transcript, and Nathalie Sarraute
talks about her Life and Works: Extracts from a Conversation, Romance
Studies, (:q8), pp. 8:6, p. 8.
:88 Notes to pages o
\n rc+i ox i x+o \n+
::. Julia Kristeva, Pouvoirs de lhorreur: Essai sur labjection (:q8o) (Paris: ditions du
Seuil, Collection Points, :q8). This is the edition to which I shall be refer-
ring. English translation, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by
Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, :q8.).
:.. It is intriguing to note that the modern tradition of a literature of abjection
identied by Kristeva includes some of the key gures in Nathalie Sarrautes
own literary pantheon: Dostoevsky, Proust and Joyce.
:. See Cest beau, Pour un oui ou pour un non, Le Mensonge, Le Silence and Isma,
respectively. For a full discussion of language in Sarrautes theatre see
Arnaud Rykner, Thtres du nouveau roman (Paris: Jos Corti, :q88), esp. Ch.
., Nathalie Sarraute et le logodrame.
:. Interview with Lucette Finas, Nathalie Sarraute: Mon thtre continue
mes romans . . ., p. . The essential account of this dimension of
Sarrautes work is to be found in Valerie Minogue, Nathalie Sarraute and the
War of the Words (Edinburgh University Press, :q8:).
:. J.L. Austin, How to do Things with Words, Chapter :.
:6. Monique Wittig, The Place of the Action, in Three Decades of the New Novel,
edited by Lois Oppenheim (Urbana: Illinois University Press, :q86), pp.
:.o (p. :.). On the importance of dialogue in Sarraute see also
Franoise Asso, La forme du dialogue, LEsprit crateur, 6:. (:qq6), pp.
q.o, and Emer OBeirne, Nathalie Sarraute: Dialogue and Distance (Oxford
University Press, :qqq).
:. Jakobson, Linguistics and Poetics, pp. 66q. Arnaud Rykner has noted the
same preference. See his Nathalie Sarraute, p. :..
:8. This is the point made by Valerie Minogue in her article Nathalie
Sarrautes Enfance: From the Experience of Language to the Language of
Experience, in Studies in French Fiction: Essays in Honour of Vivienne Mylne,
edited by Robert Gibson (London: Grant & Cutler, :q88), pp. .oq..
:q. Lucette Finas, Nathalie Sarraute ou les mtamorphoses du verbe, Tel Quel,
.o (:q6), pp. 68 (p. :).
:o. I shall be exploring this in more detail in Chapter .
::. Interview with Serge Fauchereau and Jean Ristat, Conversation avec
Nathalie Sarraute, Digraphe, . (:q8), pp. q:8, p. :8. This is just one
example of a point made in many interviews by Sarraute.
:.. See Paul Valry et lEnfant dlphant and Flaubert le prcurseur.
:. Some of the features of Sarrautes writing noted in Chapter : illustrate the
poetic character of her writing in the sense I am discussing it here.
xi xns, noni rs \xn +nr xrv tx\xi xi sx
::. Allusions to La Princesse de Clves are scattered throughout both Sarrautes
critical and her ctional writing, but are never more than glancing. Their
function is on the one hand to acknowledge the tradition, and, on the other,
Notes to pages o8o :8q
in their glancing character, to block any possibility that the association with
Mme de Lafayette might be used to create an image of lady-novelists with
sensitive insight into the human heart.
:.. Michael Moriarty remarks that it is represented above all as a signifying
surface, Discourse and the Body in La Princesse de Clves, Paragraph :o (:q8),
pp. 686 (p. o). Moriarty provides an illuminating and wide-ranging dis-
cussion of the body in La Princesse de Clves.
:. La Princesse de Clves, edited by mile Magne (Paris: Classiques Garnier,
:q6o), p. :.
:. Roger Kempf, Le Corps romanesque (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :q68).
:. Peter Brooks, The Body in the Field of Vision, Paragraph ::: (:qq:), pp.
66 (pp. .6). The term epistemophilia is coined by Toril Moi in her
feminist account of this problem (which Brooks also draws on for his discus-
sion), Patriarchal Thought and the Drive for Knowledge, in Between
Feminism and Psychoanalysis, edited by Teresa Brennan, (London: Routledge,
:q8q), pp. :8q.o.
:6. And, according to Peter Brooks, shares with that transcendental signied all
that is problematic, if not downright impossible about itself since the
absence of the phallus always leaves the philosopher who gazes upon the
truth/ womans body feeling that the object is somehow incomplete.
:. She later abandons the term psychologie with its connotations of classical
psychological analysis for that of psychisme. See, for example, Flaubert le
prcurseur, p. :6o.
:8. See De Dostoevski Kafka in Lre du soupon.
:q. See Chapter . above for an exploration of these permutations.
:o. For another discussion about the relation between the responsiveness of the
body and its morselisation, see Rachel Bou, Lieux et gures de la sensa-
tion dans luvre de Nathalie Sarraute, Littrature, 8q (:qq), pp. 86.
::. Jean Pierrot is one of the few critics to have devoted any serious and sus-
tained attention to the body in Sarraute and he writes particularly well
about the liquefaction that constantly threatens the Sarrautean body. He
comments on the rduction frquente des rapports humains des
phnomnes dabsorption et de dvoration, et aussi linsistance sur la ralit
des humeurs, de tout ce qui est suintement, pntration, imprgnation de la
chair par une liquidit la fois ncessaire et louche [the frequent reduc-
tion of human relations to phenomena of absorption and devouring, and
also the insistance on the reality of the humours, of everything that is
seepage, penetration, saturation of the esh by a liquidity which is both nec-
essary and suspect]. Nathalie Sarraute (Paris: Corti, :qqo), p. .o.
:.. See Le Plantarium, p. : [pp. :8.].
:. I have explored some of these issues elsewhere, in Bodymatters: Self and
Other in Bakhtin, Sartre and Barthes, in Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, edited
by Ken Hirschkop and David Shepherd (Manchester University Press,
:q8q), pp. :..
:. E.g. Finis les mordillements, les morsures, les embrassements, la chaleur
:qo Notes to pages 8o8,
vivante des corps corps(P, p. .o.) [Theyre nished, the nibbling, the biting,
the embracing, the living warmth of the hand-to-hand tussle (p. .8)]; or
une peur insurmontable le tient clou, plus mme que la peur, un insur-
montable dgot devant ce qui se produirait, ce corps corps atroce, ignoble
(EVM, p. :.o) [an insuperable fear pins him down, more even than fear, an
insuperable disgust for what would happen, the appalling, shameful hand-
to-hand ght (p. :..)]; and ma qualit de corps conducteur travers lequel
passaient tous les courants dont latmosphre tait charge (PI, p. ::) [my
role of conducting rod through which all the currents that charged the
atmosphere were passing (p. :q)].
:. Gatan Brulotte has some very penetrating things to say about the role of
gesture in interaction in Sarraute in his article Le gestuaire de Nathalie
Sarraute, Revue des sciences humaines, .: (:qqo), pp. q. He remarks rightly
that, Ce corps est essentiellement un corps en interaction [This body is
essentially a body in interaction] (p. q).
:6. Ces penses sont devenues le lieu de rencontre de la communaut. Chacun
sy retrouve, y retrouve les autres. [. . .] Cest par essence la gnralit.
Prface to Portrait dun inconnu, pp. q: (p.:o) [These thoughts have
become the meeting place of the community. [. . .] In essence it is general-
ity (p. ix)].
:. Elaine Scarry, Introduction to Literature and the Body: Essays on Populations and
Persons, Selected Papers fromthe English Institute, :q86, New Series, no. :.
(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, :q88), pp. viixxvii (p. xxi).
:8. Incidentally, music, the art form that is traditionally thought of in aesthetic
theory as the one most susceptible of creating physical response is never
depicted in Sarraute. Nevertheless, music does exist for her as a quality of
style where its eects are evaluated in terms of rhythm (etc.) whose role in
creating physical response in the reader can be relatively easily inferred.
:q. Le langage dans lart du roman, p. :686.
.o. The deadly eects of language upon its object are described by Nathalie
Sarraute in Ce que je cherche faire.
.:. Hlne Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa, in New French Feminisms, edited
by Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (Brighton: Harvester Press,
:q8:), pp. .6 (pp. .8, .o, .6). The English translation by Keith
Cohen and Paula Cohen is based on a revised version of the original
French, published in :q.
... See, for example, Luce Irigaray, Speculum de lautre femme (Paris: ditions de
Minuit, :q). Translated as Speculum of the Other Woman by Gillian C. Gill
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, :q8).
.. Gaton Brulotte, Le gestuaire de Nathalie Sarraute, p. q.
.. Je place souvent ce ressenti dans des consciences fminines ou masculines
pour des raisons, quelquefois, simplement de variations du dialogue [I
often place this felt quality in womens or mens consciousnesses for reasons
which, sometimes, are simply to do with varying the dialogue] (Qui tes-vous?,
p. :o).
Notes to pages 8, :q:
.. Qui tes-vous?, p. :o. For bibliographical references to feminist readings of
Nathalie Sarraute see Sheila Bell, The Conjurors Hat: Sarraute Criticism
since :q8o, Romance Studies, . (:qq), pp. 8:o (esp. pp. 8qqo). See also,
John Phillips, Nathalie Sarraute: Metaphor, Fairy-tale and the Feminine of the Text
(New York and Washington: Peter Lang, :qq), and Michelle Marini,
Llaboration de la dirence sexuelle dans la pratique littraire de la
langue, of which an extract appears in Monique Gosselin, Enfance de
Nathalie Sarraute (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :qq6), pp. ..
srxt\r i xni rrrnrxcr
::. Interview with Sonia Rykiel, Les Nouvelles, q: Februrary :q8, pp. q:
(p. o).
:.. Pierre Demeron, Nathalie Sarraute ou littrature sans cabotinage, Arts,
q June :qq, p. ..
:. I owe this anecdote (whose implications I hope I have not overstated) to a
conversation with Robbe-Grillet in June :qq. It should, of course, be
recognised that Robbe-Grillets self-appointed role as historian of the
nouveau roman in his autobiographical writings has its own interests and
biases. Both versions of the Minuit photograph are common. See Arnaud
Rykner, Nathalie Sarraute, p. :qo for a touched-up version, and the special
number of LArc, q (:q8), p. o for the original one.
:. Interview with Michle Gazier, Nathalie Sarraute et son il, Tlrama, ::
July :q8, pp. 8q (p. 8). Here she goes on to say et plus elles sont andro-
gynes, mieux a vaut [and the more androgynous they are, the better] but
later she will argue for neutre instead of the more Woolf-ian androgyny.
See below note :o. For equally trenchant comments on criture fminine, see
also the interview with Sonia Rykiel, Les Nouvelles.
:. For example, she says to Isabelle Huppert, Jai un engagement politique en
tant que citoyenne, pas en tant qucrivain [I am politically committed as
a citizen, but not as a writer], Rencontre: Nathalie Sarraute, p. :.
:6. Interview with Michle Gazier, p. 8.
:. Fnlon [the girls lyce she attended] trs peu de lles se prsentaient au
bachot [At Fnlon very few girls went in for the baccalaurat], recalls
Nathalie Sarraute in an interview. The men teachers who came from boys
lyces to teach some of the top classes were very dierent from the women
teachers she was used to: Cela faisait une grosse dirence avec les pro-
fesseurs que nous avions avant, qui taient formes Svres et qui avaient
une tout autre faon denseigner [There was a huge dierence from the
teachers wed had before, who had been trained at Svres and who had a
completely dierent way of teaching], interview with Danile Sallenave,
Sur la langue, lcriture, le travail, Genesis, , (:qq), pp. ::.: (pp. :::8).
For a full and very sobering discussion of the nature and extent of the
dierences between the education of girls and of their teachers at the cole
Normale Suprieure for women at Svres, as compared to their male
:q. Notes to pages 8
counterparts, see Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual
Woman, (Oxford: Blackwell, :qq), esp. Chapter .. Leah D. Hewitt also
makes a comparison between Sarraute and Simone de Beauvoir in her dis-
cussion of Sarraute in her Autobiographical Tightropes (Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press, :qq.) pp. q:.
:8. Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxime sexe, vol. i, p. .8 [ p. .].
:q. Qui tes-vous?, p. :.. Sarraute invokes the notion of le neutre here to dene
the gender status of the human being.
:o. Monique Wittig has made a strong case for the eradication of gender in
writing, and mentions the example of Sarraute whose work while being of
another nature nevertheless inspired some of the strategies of her own
writing. See The Mark of Gender, in The Poetics of Gender, edited by Nancy
K. Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, :q86), pp. 6 (p. ).
::. See also TNTP, p. ::6.
:.. Prire dinsrer from the Gallimard edition. From Le Plantarium onwards,
Sarraute has always written her own prires dinsrer (or blurbs).
:. This passage refers to a personication of an ide, but the fact that it is
possible to personify an idea in the form of a woman says a great deal about
the terms in which the image of woman functions in Sarrautes world.
:. See interview with Franois-Marie Banier in Le Monde des livres, : April
:q8, p. :. The name Vikhrovski has a masculine ending.
:. Kolia was Sarrautes mothers second husband.
:6. Interview with Franois-Marie Banier. The extent and popularity of the
writing of Sarrautes mother is hard to assess, but there are far fewer trace-
able references to work by her than Sarrautes own account would lead one
to believe. N.Vikhrovski does not feature in any of the histories or biblio-
graphies of Russian womens writing, although the use of male pseudo-
nyms, widespread in the mid-:qth century, had become rare at this time.
Indeed, I have been able to establish only two references to publications by
her, the rst to a serialised novel, Ikh Zhizn (Their Life) in Russkoe Bogatstvo in
:q:8, nos. :6), and the second to a novel entitled Vremya (Time) published by
an migr publishing house, Maison du livre tranger in Paris and Parabola
in Berlin in :q., the year in which Sarraute began to write Tropismes. (I am
grateful to Catriona Kelly, G.S. Smith and Galin Tihanov who have helped
me with information on this matter.)
This leads one to speculate that Sarraute has inated the status and
extent of her mothers writing in order to have a worthy opponent for her
own enterprise. In conversation Sarraute told me that after her mothers
death she came across the copy of Portrait dun inconnu that she had given her
mother when the book appeared, and found that only the pages of the
Preface by Sartre had been cut (and therefore read). It was hard to interpret
exactly the tone of Sarrautes anecdote, but there was a sense of resignation
in the face of a predictable (and who knows?, perhaps merciful) indierence
on her mothers part.
:. The gesture in Enfance is described as follows: Je ne peux pas la [Maman]
Notes to pages 8.o8 :q
revoir se regardant dans un miroir, se poudrant . . . seulement son coup dil
rapide quand elle passait devant une glace et son geste press pour remet-
tre en place une mche chappe de son chignon, rentrer une pingle
cheveux qui dpasse . . . (p. q) [I cant remember her looking at herself in
the mirror, powdering her face . . . only her rapid glance when she passed a
looking glass, and her hasty gesture to push a stray wisp of hair back into
her bun, push in a protruding pin . . . (p. 8.)].
:8. Interview with Isabelle Huppert, p. :o. See also Chapter :, p. ., and note
.
:q. Naomi Schor makes some interesting remarks about this passage in her
essay The Portrait of a Gentleman: Representing Men in (French)
Womens Writing, in Bad Objects: Essays Popular and Unpopular (Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, :qq), pp. ::::. In particular she argues that
this curious form of mutual resonance [. . .] bypasses the specular in favour
of the vocal (p. :o).
.o. For further discussion on this usual direction of identication where the
subject identies with the other see for example Diane Fuss, Identication
Papers (New York and London: Routledge, :qq) and Slavoj Z

izek, The
Sublime Object of Ideology (London and New York: Verso, :q8q), esp. pp.
:o:.
.:. Nathalie Sarraute, Tolsto, Les Lettres franaises, no. 8., ...8 September
:q6o, pp. :, .
... The reference is to War and Peace, Book , Chapter 8.
.. In LUsage de la parole Sarraute stages another deathbed scene in which she
picks up the words of the dying Chekhov, amplies them and gives them
resonance, so that he too ends up being like her. See Ich sterbe, also dis-
cussed below in my Conclusion.
.. Portrait dun inconnu was rst published by Robert Marin in Paris in :q8 with
a preface by Sartre.
.. See Qui tes-vous?, p. :o.
.6. See Chapter :, p. and note :.
.. Un anti-portrait de la romancire, interview in Le Monde, : April :q8, p.
:.
.8. See notes to both these essays in Nathalie Sarraute, uvres compltes.
.q. See La Force des choses, (Paris: Gallimard, :q6), p. .q:. Translated as Force of
Circumstance (London: Andr Deutsch, :q6).
o. In this interview with Thrse de Saint Phalle, Sarraute comments on
Beauvoirs latest novel, Les Belles Images, as follows: Jai lu le roman de
Simone de Beauvoir. Il mest impossible de voir le moindre rapport entre son
livre et les miens. Il ny a pas un trait de commun! Ni dans la forme, ni dans
le fond! [Ive read Simone de Beauvoirs novel. Its impossible for me to see
the slightest connection between her book and my books. There isnt a single
thing in common! Neither in their form, nor in their content!]. See Le Figaro
littraire, January :q6, p. :o.
:. The metaphor of the relay race for literary evolution is implied in much of
:q Notes to pages ..o..
Sarrautes critical writing and is made explicit in an interview published
under the title O va le roman?, in Le Canada franais, , (:q6:), pp. :6:.:
Je crois que chacun de nous vient aprs dautres, que chacun de nous a des
prcurseurs, que la littrature est une course de relais o lcrivain passe le
tmoin lcrivain qui le suit (p. :6) [I believe that each of us comes after
others, each of us has precursors, and that literature is a relay race where
the writer hands on the baton to the person who comes after]. For further
discussion of this idea, see Chapter 6.
6 cni +i ci sx \xn +nr +rnni nrr nrsi nr +o rs +\nri sn cox+\c+
::. In this connection see Jacques Derrida on Blanchot, La loi du genre/ The
Law of Genre, Glyph, (:q8o), pp. :6..; Leyla Perrone-Moiss on
Blanchot, Barthes and Butor, Lintertextualit critique, Potique, . (:q6),
pp. .8; and Roland Barthes on Sollers, Sollers crivain (Paris: ditions du
Seuil, :qq).
:.. Nathalie Sarraute, Interview with Jean-Louis zine in Les crivains sur la
sellette (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :q8:, pp. q), pp. 8. See also Forme et
contenu du roman, p. :668.
:. Ce que voient les oiseaux, p. :6. The Cinderella allusion appears in Le
langage dans lart du roman, p. :68o. In an interview in :q6 at the time of
the publication of Les Fruits dor Sarraute asserted that, Painting has devel-
oped much, much faster than literature. In literature we are still at the
Impressionist phase. We are gradually moving towards abstraction, whereas
in painting, abstraction has long since been established. Interview with
Franois Bondy, Vom Nichts an schaen, Der Monat, :8 (December :q6),
p. o. Translation from the German mine.
:. Derrida notes that it comes as no surprise that, in nature and art, genre, a
concept that is essentially genealogico-taxonomic, itself engenders so many
classicatory vertigines [tant de vertiges classicatoires] when it goes about
classifying itself and situating the classicatory principle or instrument
within a set (La loi du genre/ The Law of Genre, pp. :8: and .o8). Jean-
Marie Schaeer also oers a good discussion of the variety of criteria used
in dening genre. And he draws attention to a slightly dierent classicatory
panic elicited by literary genre when he points out that the issue of genre is
uniquely contentious in literature as compared to other arts, such as music
and painting, which also use generic classications. See his Quest-ce quun
genre littraire? (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :q8q), pp. 8q. For a more positive-
minded (and panic-free) argument for restoring a sense of the variety of
literary forms, see Alistair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the
Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, :q8.).
:. Le gant retourn, p. :o8. See also the discussion in the Notice to the
Thtre by Arnaud Rykner, OC, p. :q8.
:6. Lucette Finas, Nathalie Sarraute: Mon thtre continue mes romans . . .,
La Quinzaine littraire, :6 December :q8, pp. .
Notes to pages ..... :q
:. For a full discussion of this subject and other aspects of the essay, see Claire
de Obaldia, The Essayistic Spirit: Literature, Modern Criticism and the Essay
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, :qq). For a good example of a blurring of
generic boundaries see Barthess Preface to his Essais critiques where in
spelling out the hopeless longing to be a writer (le roman est toujours lhori-
zon du critique [the novel is always the critics horizon]), he actually incites
his reader to see him as being a version of such a writer through his resem-
blance to Prousts narrator, celui qui va crire [the person who is going to
write]. Roland Barthes, Essais critiques (p. :8 [p. xxi]). Sarraute is, of course,
someone who has already written and who will continue to write, thus
placing the novel and the critical essay in a rather dierent relation to the
one so painfully evoked by Barthes.
:8. Reviewing the volume in :q6, Paul de Man sums up Lre du soupon as un
diagnostic sur ltat actuel dun genre littraire devenu problmatique [a
diagnosis of the current state of a literary genre which has become prob-
lematic], Situation du roman, Monde nouveau, :.::o: (:q6), pp. 6o. See
also Claude Mauriac, Nathalie Sarraute et le nouveau ralisme for a
similar view. Extracts from these and other contemporary reviews can be
found in the Accueil de la critique of Sarrautes uvre critique in the uvres
compltes, pp. .o:6.
:q. See Celia Britton, The Nouveau Roman: Fiction, Theory and Politics (London:
Macmillan Press, :qq.).
:o. Sarraute gave her rst lectures in Italy and in Lausanne in :q8. For a list of
all the countries in which she has lectured, see Qui tes-vous?, pp. .o6.
::. Jean-Yves Tadi, Un trait du roman, LArc, q (:q8), pp. q. Tadis is
the only discussion Lre du soupon that I know which treats it as a text in its
own right.
:.. Noone has argued more clearly for this kind of reading of Sarrautes lan-
guage than Valerie Minogue in Nathalie Sarraute and the War of the Words. Celia
Britton also puts the emphasis on the strategic role of the theory in the
nouveau roman. See The Nouveau Roman: Fiction, Theory and Politics.
:. Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, :q8),
pp. 68.
:. I owe this observation to Mark Lee.
:. RolandBarthes, Critique et vrit (Paris: ditions duSeuil, :q66), p. 6, translated
as Criticism and Truth by Katrine Pilcher Keuneman (London: The Athlone
Press, :q8) (p. q:). Infact Sarraute does cite Barthes onthis topic withpositive
approval in an interviewin :qq. See belowpp. :8q and note :q.
:6. Interview with Nicole Zand, Entretien avec Nathalie Sarraute, Le Monde,
:8 January :q6, p. :8.
:. For a full discussion of this aspect of Sarrautes writing see A.S. Newman,
Une Posie des discours: Essai sur les romans de Nathalie Sarraute (Geneva: Droz,
:q6).
:8. Interview with Serge Fauchereau and Jean Ristat, p. :6.
:q. Interview with Genevive Serreau, Lettres nouvelles, .q April :qq, pp. .8o
:q6 Notes to pages ....
(p. .8). In the light of the remarks I have quoted from Critique et vrit it is
interesting to see Sarraute put her seal of approval on Barthess views on
the matter. Since Critique et vrit did not appear until :q66, one can only
speculate about what essay or work by Barthes Sarraute might be referring
to here.
.o. Interview with Franois Poirier, Art press, JulyAugust :q8, pp. .8o, p. .q.
.:. Some of these have been briey noted by Jean-Yves Tadi, Un trait, pp.
8q.
... E.g. Claude Mauriac in his review of Lre du soupon. See Chapter :, note :.
.. Le langage parl et le langage pens sont le sujet de la ction; ils envahissent
la critique du roman [Spoken language and the language of thought are
the subject of the ction; they have invaded the criticism of the novel]. But
his explanation for this phenomenon (lessai se fragmente en dialogue et
devient un roman dides [the essay is being broken up into dialogue and
is becoming a novel of ideas]) fails to explain why Sarrautes critical writing
needs to take the form of ction. See Tadi, Un trait, p. q.
.. In addition to the three unpublished lectures, the articles Ce que je cherche
faire and Le gant retourn were both delivered as lectures before
appearing in written form. The interview with Tel Quel is a special case since
although it takes the form of a dialogue, the answers were provided in
writing in reponse to written questions. It is, however, quite manifestly a dia-
logue, even if not a spoken one.
.. Information gleaned from a conversation with Nathalie Sarraute.
.6. Interviews with Carmen Licari, Francofonia q (:q8), pp. :6 (p. :).
s\xr ni rrrnrxcr: nrrni sr \xn \\ni \+i ox
::. Examples of the rst category of critical approach are too numerous to
mention. For accounts of Enfance in an autobiographical perspective see
Sheila Bells bibliographical commentary in The Conjurors Hat: Sarraute
Criticism since :q8o, esp. pp. qo.
:.. I have explored some of these issues in Autobiography as Intertext: Barthes,
Sarraute, Robbe-Grillet, in Intertextuality: Theories and Practices, edited by
Michael Worton and Judith Still (Manchester University Press, :qqo), pp.
:o8.q.
:. Gender as ever in Sarraute presents a slightly tricky problem here, since
the narrator portrays himself grammatically as masculine even while
acknowledging authorship of works by Sarraute. I shall refer to the writer-
narrator of LUsage de la parole as he in recognition of the staged nature of
the narratorial role he has in the texts which comprise the work.
:. For a full and illuminating discussion of these relations see Philippe Lejeune,
Paroles denfance, Revue des sciences humaines, .: (:qqo), pp. .8.
:. For a good discussion of these continuities see Franoise van Roey-Roux,
Enfance de Nathalie Sarraute ou de la ction lautobiographie, tudes lit-
traires, : (:q8), pp. .8..
Notes to pages .o.8 :q
:6. Document: Interview avec Nathalie Sarraute, by Bettina Knapp, Kentucky
Romance Quarterly, (:q6), pp. .8q (p. .8).
:. Entretien avec Nathalie Sarraute, in Arnaud Rykner, Nathalie Sarraute, pp.
:8 (p. :q).
:8. Lre du soupon, p. 6 [p. q]. For a ne example of this kind of reading
see Valerie Minogue, Nathalie Sarrautes Enfance: From the Experience of
Language to the Language of Experience, in Studies in French Fiction: Essays
in Honour of Vivienne Mylne.
:q. Philippe Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :q).
Extract translated as The Autobiographical Pact by Katherine Leary, in
On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, :q8q), pp. o.
:o. Nathalie Sarraute et son il, interview with Michle Gazier, Tlrama, p.
8.
::. Pierre Demeron, Nathalie Sarraute ou littrature sans cabotinage, p. .
:.. See OC, note : on p. ::. for details about the letter Sarraute received after
the publication of Enfance from the daughter of Mme Bernard conrming
the portrait of her mother and the description of their home. Nathalie
Sarraute also mentioned in conversation that her cousin conrmed the
accuracy of her depiction of the holidays spent with her uncle and aunt at
Kamenetz-Podolsk (E, pp. .o).
:. For further examples of these parallels, see Monique Gosselin, Enfance de
Nathalie Sarraute, pp. .:..., and notes in the uvres compltes, passim.
:. See OC, p. and note :, p. q: and note :, and p. q. and note :.
:. See Thtre: Notice gnrale in OC, pp. :q86, the Notice for Pour un oui
ou pour un non, OC, pp. .o.qo, and p. :qq, note :. In an interview with
Arnaud Rykner, Sarraute claims that the reworking of the original phrase
in Entre la vie et la mort was entirely unconscious. In response to Rykners
comment that on est frapp par les liens trs troits qui existent entre votre
thtre et vos romans, notamment parce que vos pices semblent directe-
ment natre de ces derniers. chaque fois, elles en dveloppent un passage,
un chapitre . . . [one is struck by the very close links which exist between
your theatre and your novels, particularly because your plays seem to derive
directly from the novels. Each time, they develop a passage, or a chapter
from them . . .], Sarraute replies: Je nen suis pas du tout consciente quand
jcris une pice. Comme je vous lai dit, je relis trs rarement mes romans.
Si bien que, par exemple, je ne me souvenais absolument pas davoir crit
tout un chapitre sur Cest bien, a, dans Entre la vie et la mort. Cest seule-
ment par la suite que des gens qui ont vu Pour un oui ou pour un non me lont
fait remarquer. Mais cela veut uniquement dire que Cest bien, a tait
une expression qui mavait frappe et que je dsirais voir ce quelle cachait.
Je lai fait pour le livre, puis je lai oubli, et jai cherch de nouveau pour la
pice. Mais je nai rien repris du roman. Ce sont des choses tout fait
spares [I am not at all conscious of it when I write a play. As I said to
you, I rarely reread my novels. So that for example, I had no memory at all
:q8 Notes to pages ..
of having written a whole chapter on Cest bien, a in Entre la vie et la mort.
It was only afterwards that people who had seen Pour un oui ou pour un non
pointed it out to me. But that just means that Cest bien, a was an expres-
sion which had struck me and that I wanted to see what it concealed. I did
it for the book, then I forgot about it, and I looked again for the play. But I
didnt repeat anything from the novel. They are two quite separate things].
See Arnaud Rykner, Nathalie Sarraute, pp. :8o:. This disclaimer raises as
many problems as it seems to explain and I shall be exploring some of them
in the remainder of this chapter.
:6. See OC, p. : and note. :, and p. q6:, note :.
:. See Thtre: Notice gnrale, OC, pp. :q8.
:8. See p. :. [p. :..], and the Notice to Les Fruits dor, OC, p. :8.8.
:q. Nathalie Sarraute, interview with Germaine Bre, Contemporary Literature,
: (:q), pp. :6 (p. :).
.o. Interview with Arnaud Rykner, in Rykner, Nathalie Sarraute, p. :8.
.:. Franoise Assos study of Sarrautes work takes this principle of return in
Sarrautes writing as its starting point: on verra dans ce mouvement qui
conduit lcrivain repartir dun point, ventuellement le mme mais
comme toujours nouveau, une caractristique de luvre [one can see in
this movement which leads the writer to keep starting out from the same
point, which is possibly the same one but is as if it was always new, a
characteristic of the work], Nathalie Sarraute: Une criture de leraction (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, :qq), p. ..
... Andr Allemand, Luvre romanesque de Nathalie Sarraute (Neuchtel: ditions
de la Baconnire, :q8o), p. :.
.. Interview introducing Sarrautes reading of Les Fruits dor (Audivis, :q8).
Quoted in uvres compltes, p. :8.
.. See Franoise Asso, Nathalie Sarraute: Une criture de leraction, esp. pp. :6.
.. As Franoise Calin says of this scene, les variantes oertes par les ritra-
tions, tout en cernant chaque fois dun peu plus prs la vrit de lanec-
dote, attaquent la notion mme de lexistence dune telle vrit. Une page
en recommence une autre en lannulant [the variants provided by the
repetitions, while they get a little closer to the truth of the story each time,
attack the very notion of the existence of such a truth. One page starts
another by erasing it]. See Franoise Calin, La Vie retrouve: tude de luvre
romanesque de Nathalie Sarraute (Paris: Minard, Lettres Modernes, :q6),
p. :8o.
.6. Quoted in the Documents of the Notice for Tropismes in the uvres com-
pltes, p. :.
coxcrtsi ox: nr\+n \xn +nr i xrossi nrr ni rrrnrxcr
::. Interview with Carmen Licari, Francofonia, p. 6.
:.. Narrator is not quite the right word for someone whose consciousness
seems to be conveyed in something very like speech, but who never says je.
Notes to pages .., :qq
In some of the other texts in Ici, the central consciousness is referred to in
the third person as il or ils. However, for the sake of convenience I shall
use the term narrator for these rst three texts because it approximates so
closely to the position of the central consciousness in them.
:. EVM, p. : [pp. 6]. The anecdote is taken from Rilkes Notebooks of Malte
Laurids Brigge. See OC, note to p. 6. Neither the source nor the poets name
is given in Sarrautes text.
.oo Notes to pages .,.,,
Bibliography
WORKS BY NATHALIE SARRAUTE
rnosr
Tropismes (:qq) (Paris: ditions de Minuit, :q). Translated in Tropisms and The
Age of Suspicion by Maria Jolas (London: John Calder, :q6).
Portrait dun inconnu (:qq) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q). Translated as Portrait of
a Man Unknown by Maria Jolas (London: John Calder, :q8).
Martereau (:q) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q.). Translated as Martereau by Maria
Jolas (London: John Calder, :q6).
Le Plantarium (:qq) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q.). Translated as The Planetarium
by Maria Jolas (London: John Calder, :q6:).
Les Fruits dor (:q6) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q). Translated as The Golden Fruits
by Maria Jolas (London: John Calder, :q6).
Entre la vie et la mort (:q68) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q). Translated as Between
Life and Death by Maria Jolas (London: Calder & Boyars, :qo).
Vous les entendez? (:q.) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q6). Translated as Do You Hear
Them?, by Maria Jolas (London: Calder & Boyars, :q).
disent les imbciles (:q6) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q8). Translated as Fools Say
by Maria Jolas (London: John Calder, :q).
LUsage de la parole (:q8o) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q8). Translated as The Use of
Speech by Barbara Wright in consultation with the author (London: John
Calder, :q8).
Enfance (:q8) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q8). Translated as Childhood by Barbara
Wright in consulation with the author (London: John Calder, :q8).
Tu ne taimes pas (:q8q) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :qq:). Translated as You Dont Love
Yourself by Barbara Wright in consultation with the author (New York:
George Braziller, Inc., :qqo).
Ici (:qq) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :qq). Translated as Here by Barbara Wright
in consultation with the author (New York: George Braziller, :qq).
Ouvrez (Paris: Gallimard, (:qq).
.o:
+nr\+nr
Le Silence (:q6)
Le Mensonge (:q66)
Isma ou Ce qui sappelle rien (:qo)
Cest beau (:q)
Elle est l (:q8)
Pour un oui ou pour un non (:q8.)
all in Nathalie Sarraute, uvres compltes, edited by Jean-Yves Tadi (Paris:
Gallimard, Bibliothque de la Pliade, :qq6).
cni +i ci sx
Paul Valry et lEnfant dlphant (:q)
Lre du soupon (:q6) (Paris: Gallimard, Folio/Essais, :q8). Translated in
Tropisms and the Age of Suspicion by Maria Jolas (London: John Calder, :q6).
includes: De Dostoevski Kafka (:q)
Lre du soupon (:qo)
Conversation et sous-conversation (:q6)
Ce que voient les oiseaux (:q6)
Roman et ralit (:qq)
La littrature, aujourdhui (:q6.)
Flaubert le prcurseur (:q6)
Forme et contenu du roman (undated)
Le langage dans lart du roman (undated)
Ce que je cherche faire (:q.)
Le gant retourn (:q)
All references to essays other than those contained in Lre du soupon are
to the uvres compltes.
Page references are to the cited editions and translations. I have modied trans-
lations where it seemed necessary or desirable.
INTERVIEWS WITH NATHALIE SARRAUTE CITED
Interview with Gabriel dAubarde, Les Nouvelles littraires, o July :q, p. .
Nathalie Sarraute ou littrature sans cabotinage, interview with Pierre
Demeron, Arts, q June :qq, p. ..
Interview with Genevive Serreau, Les Lettres nouvelles, .q April :qq, pp. .8o.
Nathalie Sarraute, Tolsto, Les Lettres franaises, 8., ...8 September :q6o, pp.
:,.
O va le roman?, Le Canada franais, , (:q6:), pp. :6:..
Virginia Woolf ou la visionnaire du maintenant, Les Lettres franaises, .q June
:q6:, pp. :, .
Bondy, Franois, Vom Nichts an schaen, Der Monat, :8 (December :q6), p.
o.
Document: Interview avec Nathalie Sarraute, by Bettina Knapp, Kentucky
Romance Quarterly, (:q6), pp. .8q.
.o. Bibliography
Nathalie Sarraute ne veut rien avoir de commun avec Simone de Beauvoir,
interview with Thrse de Saint Phalle, Le Figaro littraire, January :q6,
p. :o.
Interview with Nicole Zand, Le Monde, :8 January :q6, p. :8.
Nathalie Sarraute au kibboutz, Propos recueillis par Erwin Spatz, La Quinzaine
littraire, :6: October :q6q, pp. :.:.
Nathalie Sarraute, interview with Germaine Bre, Contemporary Literature, :
(:q), pp. :6.
Nathalie Sarraute: Mon thtre continue mes romans . . ., interview with
Lucette Finas, La Quinzaine littraire, :6 December :q8, pp. .
Interview with Jean-Louis zine in Les crivains sur la sellette (Paris: ditions du
Seuil, :q8:), pp. q.
Interview with Franois-Marie Banier in Le Monde des livres, : April :q8, p. :.
Interview with Franois Poirier, Art press, July-August :q8, pp. .8o.
Interview with Sonia Rykiel, Les Nouvelles, q: Februrary :q8, pp. q:.
Conversation avec Nathalie Sarraute, interview with Serge Fauchereau and
Jean Ristat, Digraphe, . (:q8), pp. q:8.
Nathalie Sarraute et son il, interview with Michle Gazier, Tlrama, :: July
:q8, pp. 8q.
Nathalie Sarraute talks about her Life and Works: Extracts from a
Conversation, Romance Studies, (:q8), pp. 8:6.
Quest-ce quil y a, quest-ce qui sest pass? Mais rien: Entretiens avec
Nathalie Sarraute, by Carmen Licari, Francofonia, q (:q8), pp. :6.
Nathalie Sarraute et ses traducteurs europens, interview with Elmar
Tophoven, in Actes des premires assises de la traduction littraire (Arles .8)
(Arles: Actes Sud, :q8), pp. :.q.
Nathalie Sarraute: Qui tes-vous?, Conversations with Simone Benmussa, (Lyon: La
Manufacture, :q8).
Interview de Nathalie Sarraute, by Grant E. Kaiser, Roman .oo, (:q8), pp.
::8..
Interview with Nathalie Sarraute broadcast on France Culture, February :q88.
Entretien avec Nathalie Sarraute, in Arnaud Rykner, Nathalie Sarraute (Paris:
ditions du Seuil, :qq:), pp. :8.
voix nue, interview with Danile Sallenave, broadcast on France-Culture,
.. March :qq..
Rencontre: Nathalie Sarraute, interview with Isabelle Huppert, Cahiers du
cinma, :, (:qq), pp. 8:.
Sur la langue, lcriture, le travail, interview with Danile Sallenave, Genesis, ,
(:qq), pp. ::.:.
CRITICAL STUDIES OF NATHALIE SARRAUTE
Allemand, Andr, Luvre romanesque de Nathalie Sarraute, (Neuchtel: ditions de
la Baconnire, :q8o)
Angremy, Annie (ed.), Nathalie Sarraute: Portrait dun crivain (Paris: Bibliothque
nationale de France, :qq)
Bibliography .o
LArc, q (:q8) Nathalie Sarraute
Asso, Franoise, Nathalie Sarraute: Une criture de leraction (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, :qq)
Le lieu des tropismes, in Nathalie Sarraute: Portrait dun crivain, edited by Annie
Angrmy, pp. .
La forme du dialogue, LEsprit crateur, 6:. (:qq6), pp. q.o.
Barbour, Sarah, Nathalie Sarraute and the Feminist Reader: Identities in Process (London
and Toronto: Associated University Presses, :qq)
Bell, Sheila, Nathalie Sarraute: A Bibliography (London: Grant & Cutler, :q8.)
Sarraute: Portrait dun inconnu and Vous les entendez? (London: Grant & Cutler,
:q88)
The Figure of the Reader in LUsage de la parole, Romance Studies ., (:q8), pp.
68.
Sarraute Criticism since :q8o, Romance Studies, . (:qq), pp. 8:o.
Endings in Autobiography: The Example of Enfance, LEsprit crateur, 6:.
(:qq6), pp. .:6.
Besser, Gretchen, Nathalie Sarraute (Boston: Twayne, :qq)
Blanchot, Maurice, Dun art sans avenir, La Nouvelle Revue franaise, : (:q),
pp. 88q8.
A rose is a rose, La Nouvelle Revue franaise, :. (:q6), pp. 86q.
Blot, Jean, Nathalie Sarraute: une ne bue, La Nouvelle Revue franaise, :88,
(:q68), pp. ::::8.
Bou, Rachel, Lieux et gures de la sensation dans luvre de Nathalie
Sarraute, Littrature, 8q (:qq), pp. 86.
Nathalie Sarraute: La sensation en qute de parole (Paris: LHarmattan, :qq).
Bre, Germaine, Autogynography, Southern Review, .. (:q86), pp. ..o.
Experimental Novel? Yes, but Perhaps Otherwise: Nathalie Sarraute and
Monique Wittig, in Breaking the Sequence: Womens Experimental Fiction, edited
by Ellen G. Friedman and Miriam Fuchs, (Princeton University Press,
:q8q), pp. .68.
Le for intrieur et la traverse du sicle, LEsprit crateur, 6:. (:qq6), pp.
.
Britton, Celia, The Function of the Commonplace in the Novels of Nathalie
Sarraute, Language and Style, :. (:qq), pp. qqo.
The Self and Language in the Novels of Nathalie Sarraute, Modern Language
Review, (:q8.), pp. 8.
Reported Speech and Sous-conversation, Romance Studies, . (:q8), pp.
6qq.
The Nouveau Roman: Fiction, Theory and Politics (London: Macmillan Press, :qq.)
Brulotte, Gatan, Le gestuaire de Nathalie Sarraute, Revue des sciences humaines,
.: (:qqo), pp. q.
Calin, Franoise, La Vie retrouve: tude de luvre romanesque de Nathalie Sarraute
(Paris: Minard, Lettres Modernes, :q6)
Clayton, Alan, Nathalie Sarraute ou le tremblement de lcriture (Paris: Archives des
lettres modernes, Minard, :q8q)
.o Bibliography
Nathalie Sarraute et R.M. Rilke: Une course de relais jamais interrompue,
Le Nouveau Roman en questions, . (:qq), pp. 6q..
Cranaki, Mimica et Yvon Belaval, Nathalie Sarraute (Paris: Gallimard, :q6)
De Man, Paul, Situation du roman, Monde nouveau, :.::o: (:q6), pp. 6:.
Digraphe, . (:q8) Aujourdhui Nathalie Sarraute
Eakin, Paul John, Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography (Princeton
University Press, :qq.)
Eliez-Regg, Elisabeth, La Conscience dautrui et des objets dans luvre de Nathalie
Sarraute (Frankfurt-am-Main and Berne: Herbert Lang, and Peter Lang,
:q.)
LEsprit crateur, 6:. (:qq6) Nathalie Sarraute ou le texte du for intrieur
Finas, Lucette, Nathalie Sarraute ou les mtamorphoses du verbe, Tel Quel, .o
(:q6), pp. 68.
Fleming, John, The Imagery of Tropism in the Novels of Nathalie Sarraute,
in Image and Theme: Studies in Modern French Fiction, edited by W.M. Frohock
(Harvard University Press, :q6q), pp. q8.
Gosselin, Monique, Enfance de Nathalie Sarraute: Les mots de la mre, Revue
des sciences humaines, ... (:qq:), pp. :.:..
Enfance de Nathalie Sarraute, (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :qq6)
Gratton, Johnnie, Towards Narrativity: Nathalie Sarrautes Enfance, Forum for
Modern Language Studies, :: (:qq), pp. oo::.
Heath, Stephen, The Nouveau Roman: A Study in the Practice of Writing, (London:
Elek, :q.)
Hewitt, Leah D., Autobiographical Tightropes (Lincoln and London: University of
Nebraska Press, :qq.)
Jaccard, Jean-Luc, Nathalie Sarraute Zurich: Juris, :q6)
Janvier, Ludovic, Une Parole exigeante: Le nouveau roman (Paris: ditions de Minuit,
:q6)
Jeerson, Ann, Autobiography as Intertext: Barthes, Sarraute, Robbe-Grillet,
in Intertextuality: Theories and Practices, edited by Michael Worton and Judith
Still (Manchester University Press, :qqo), pp. :o8.q.
Lejeune, Philippe, Paroles denfance, Revue des sciences humaines, .: (:qqo), pp.
.8.
King, Adle, French Women Novelists: Dening a Female Style (London: Macmillan
Press, :q8q)
McCarthy, Mary, Hanging by a Thread in The Writing on the Wall, (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, :qo), pp. :.88.
McLure, Roger, Sarraute: Le Plantarium (London: Grant & Cutler, :q8)
Magazine littraire, :q6 (:q8) Nathalie Sarraute
Marini, Michelle, Llaboration de la dirence sexuelle dans la pratique lit-
traire de la langue, in Monique Gosselin, Enfance de Nathalie Sarraute, pp.
..
Mauriac, Claude, Nathalie Sarraute et le nouveau ralisme, Preuves, :., (:q)
pp. 68:.
LAlittrature contemporaine (Paris: Albin Michel, :q8)
Bibliography .o
Micha, Ren, Nathalie Sarraute (Paris: ditions universitaires, :q66)
Minogue, Valerie, Nathalie Sarraute and the War of the Words (Edinburgh University
Press, :q8:)
Nathalie Sarraute: LUsage de la parole, Romance Studies, . (:q8), pp. ..
Ironie et ralit dans les romans de Nathalie Sarraute, Cahiers du CERF XX,
(:q8), pp. ...
Nathalie Sarrautes Enfance: From the Experience of Language to the
Language of Experience, in Studies in French Fiction: Essays in Honour of
Vivienne Mylne, edited by Robert Gibson (London: Grant & Cutler, :q88),
pp. .oq..
Lenfant et les sortilges, in Autour de Nathalie Sarraute, edited by Sabine Ray,
Annales littraires de lUniversit de Besanon, 8o (:qq), pp. q6..
The Child, the Doll and the Hands that Hold: Tropisme . as a Paradigm in
the Work of Nathalie Sarraute, New Novel Review, :: (:qq), pp. .:.
The Hand of the Child: A Basic Figure in the Work of Nathalie Sarraute,
Romance Studies, . (:qq6), pp. 8.
Nathalie Sarraute, Anti-Terrorist: A Reading of disent les imbciles, LEsprit
crateur, 6:. (:qq6), pp. 88.
Nelson, R.J., Territorial Psychology in Nathalie Sarrautes Les Fruits dor,
Symposium, (:q8:.), pp. o..
Newman, A.S., Une Posie des discours: Essai sur les romans de Nathalie Sarraute
(Geneva: Droz, :q6)
OBeirne, Emer, Reading Nathalie Sarraute: Dialogue and Distance (Oxford
University Press, :qqq)
Phillips, John, Nathalie Sarraute: Metaphor, Fairy-tale and the Feminine of the Text (New
York and Washington: Peter Lang, :qq)
Pierrot, Jean, Nathalie Sarraute (Paris: Corti, :qqo)
Pingaud, Bernard, Le personnage dans luvre de Nathalie Sarraute, in
LExprience romanesque (Paris: Gallimard, :q8)
Pivot, Bernard, Nathalie Sarraute gagne la coupe, Le Figaro littraire, : May
:q6, p. .
Prince, Gerald, Rcriture et ction dans disent les imbciles Neophilologus, :
(:q8), pp. :.
Ray, Sabine, Sarraute romancire: Espaces intimes (New York: Peter Lang, :q88)
Raillard, Georges, Nathalie Sarraute et la violence du texte, Littrature, . (:q:),
pp. 8q:o.
Ramsay, Raylene, The French New Autobiographies: Sarraute, Duras and Robbe-Grillet
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, :qq6)
Revue des sciences humaines, .: (:qqo) Nathalie Sarraute
Robinson-Valry, Judith, Nathalie Sarraute lectrice de Valry, in Mlange: Cest
lesprit: Volume dhommages oert Huguette Laurentini, edited by S. Bourjea
(Paris: Minard, :q8q), pp. .:.
Roey-Roux, Franoise van, Enfance de Nathalie Sarraute ou de la ction lau-
tobiographie, tudes littraires, : (:q8), pp. .8..
Roman .oo, . (:qq8) Nathalie Sarraute
.o6 Bibliography
Rykner, Arnaud, Thtres du nouveau roman (Paris: Jos Corti, :q88)
Nathalie Sarraute (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :qq:)
Narcisse et les mots-miroirs (Sartre, Leiris, Sarraute autobiographes),
Romanic Review, 8 (:qq.), pp. 8:q.
Thtre et exorcisme: Les corchs de la parole, Potique, :o. (:qq), pp.
:6..
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Prface, in Nathalie Sarraute, Portrait dun inconnu, pp. q:.
Schor, Naomi, The Portrait of a Gentleman: Representing Men in (French)
Womens Writing, in Bad Objects: Essays Popular and Unpopular, (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, :qq), pp. ::::.
Sheringham, Michael, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires (Oxford University
Press, :qq)
Tadi, Jean-Yves, Un trait du roman, LArc, q (:q8), pp. q.
Musicienne de nos silences, in Nathalie Sarraute: Portrait dun crivain, edited
by Annie Angremy, pp. 6.
Temple, Ruth, Nathalie Sarraute (New York: Columbia University Press, :q68)
Tison Braun, Micheline, Nathalie Sarraute ou la recherche de lauthenticit (Paris:
Gallimard, :q:)
Vercier, Bruno, (Nouveau) roman et autobiographie: Enfance de Nathalie
Sarraute, French Literature Series, :. (:q8), pp. :6.o.
Watson-Williams, Helen, The Novels of Nathalie Sarraute: Towards an Aesthetic
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, :q8:)
Wetherill, P.M., Flaubert et les distortions de la critique moderne, Symposium,
.: (:q:), pp. .:q.
Wittig, Monique, The Place of the Action, in Three Decades of the New Novel,
edited by Lois Oppenheim (Urbana: Illinois University Press, :q86)
The Mark of Gender, in The Poetics of Gender, edited by Nancy K. Miller,
(New York: Columbia University Press, :q86), pp. 6.
Wunderli-Mller, Christine B., Le Thme du masque et les banalits dans luvre de
Nathalie Sarraute (Zurich: Juris Druck Verlag, :qo)
Zants, Emily, Valry and the Modern French Novel, LEsprit crateur, :. (:q6),
pp. 8:qo.
OTHER LITERARY TEXTS
Balzac, Honor de, Avant-propos, La Comdie humaine, edited by Marcel
Bouteron, (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothque de la Pliade, :q), vol. :.
Le Pre Goriot (Paris: Classiques Garnier, :q6). Translated as Old Goriot by
Ellen Marriage (London: Everymans Library, :qq:)
Barthes, Roland, Roland Barthes (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :q). Translated as
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes by Richard Howard (NewYork: Farrar, :q)
Beauvoir, Simone de, La Force des choses (Paris: Gallimard, :q6). Translated as
Force of Circumstance (London: Andr Deutsch, :q6)
Camus, Albert, La Chute (Paris: Gallimard, :q6). Translated as The Fall by Justin
OBrien (Harmondsworth: Penguin, :q6)
Bibliography .o
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Letters from the Underworld, translated by C.J. Hogarth
(London: Everymans Library, :q)
Gide, Andr, Les Faux-monnayeurs (Paris: Gallimard, Livre de poche, :q66). First
published in :q.. Translated as The Counterfeiters with Journal of the
Counterfeiters by Dorothy Bussy and Justin OBrien (New York: Knopf, :q:)
Journal des Faux-monnayeurs (Paris: Gallimard, :q.). Translated in The
Counterfeiters.
Kipling, Rudyard, Just-So Stories (London: Macmillan, :q)
Lafayette, Mme de, La Princesse de Clves, edited by mile Magne (Paris:
Classiques Garnier, :q6o)
Leiris, Michel, Lge dhomme (Paris: Gallimard, :qq)
La Rgle du jeu (Paris: Gallimard, :q86)
Manseld, Katherine, Journal of Katherine Manseld, denitive edition, edited by
J. Middleton Murry (London: Constable, :q)
Proust, Marcel, la Recherche du temps perdu, edited by Jean-Yves Tadi (Paris:
Gallimard, Bibliothque de la Pliade, :q8q), vols. Translated as
Remembrance of Things Past by C.K. Scott Moncrie, Terence Kilmartin and
Andreas Mayor (London: Chatto and Windus, :q8:)
Rilke, Rainer Maria, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, translated by Stephen
Mitchell (New York: Random House, :q8)
Sartre, Jean-Paul, La Nause (Paris: Gallimard, :q8). Translated as Nausea by
Robert Baldick (Harmondsworth: Penguin, :q6)
Les Mots (Paris: Gallimard, Folio, :q). First published in :q6.. Translated as
Words by Irene Clephane (Harmondsworth: Penguin, :q6)
Tolstoy, L.N., War and Peace, translated by Rosemary Edmonds
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, :q)
GENERAL
Austin, J.L., How to do Things with Words, edited by J.O. Urmson and Marina
Sbis, .nd edn. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, :q6)
Barthes, Roland, Critique et vrit (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :q66). Translated as
Criticism and Truth by Katrine Pilcher Keuneman (London: The Athlone
Press, :q8)
Essais critiques (Paris: ditions du Seuil, .nd edn. :q:). Translated as Critical
Essays, by Richard Howard (Evanston, Northwestern University Press:
:q.)
Sollers crivain (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :qq)
Beauvoir, Simone de, Le deuxime sexe, . vols. (:qq) (Paris: Gallimard, Collection
Ides, :q68). Translated as The Second Sex, by H.M. Parshley (London:
Jonathan Cape, :q)
Brooks, Peter, The Body in the Field of Vision, Paragraph, ::: (:qq:), pp. 66
Cixous, Hlne, The Laugh of the Medusa, translated by Keith Cohen and
Paula Cohen in New French Feminisms, edited by Elaine Marks and Isabelle
de Courtivron, (Brighton: Harvester Press, :q8:), pp. .6.
.o8 Bibliography
Culler, Jonathan, On Deconstruction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, :q8)
Deleuze, Gilles, Dirence et rptition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
:q68). Translated as Dierence and Repetition by Paul Patton (London:
Athlone Press, :qq)
Derrida, Jacques, De la Grammatologie (Paris: ditions de Minuit, :q6).
Translated as Of Grammatology by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore,
Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, :q6)
Marges de la philosophie (Paris: ditions de Minuit, :q.). Translated as Margins
of Philosophy by Alan Bass (Brighton: Harvester Press, :q8.)
La loi du genre/ The Law of Genre, Glyph, (:q8o), pp. :6...
Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (:q66), (London: Routledge, :qq)
Fowler, Alistair, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, :q8.)
Fuss, Diane, Identication Papers (New York and London: Routledge, :qq)
Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, (ed.), Race, Writing and Dierence (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, :q86)
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan, The Mad Woman in the Attic (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, :qq)
Girard, Ren, La Violence et le Sacr (Paris: Bernard Grasset, :q.). Translated as
Violence and the Sacred by Patrick Gregory (Baltimore, Md. and London:
Johns Hopkins University Press, :q)
Honderich, Ted, (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, :qq)
Irigaray, Luce, Speculum de lautre femme (Paris: ditions de Minuit, :q).
Translated as Speculum of the Other Woman by Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, :q8)
Jakobson, Roman, Linguistics and Poetics, Language in Literature (Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap and Harvard University Press, :q8), pp. 6.q.
Jeerson, Ann, Bodymatters: Self and Other in Bakhtin, Sartre and Barthes,
in Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, edited by Ken Hirschkop and David
Shepherd (Manchester University Press, :q8q), pp. :..
Johnson, Barbara, The Critical Dierence (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins
University Press, :q8o)
Kempf, Roger, Le Corps romanesque (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :q68)
Kristeva, Julia, Pouvoirs de lhorreur: Essai sur labjection (:q8o) (Paris: ditions du
Seuil, Collection Points, :q8). Translated as Powers of Horror: An Essay on
Abjection, by Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press,
:q8.)
Lejeune, Philippe, Le Pacte autobiographique (Paris: ditions du Seuil, :q).
Extract translated as The Autobiographical Pact by Katherine Leary, in
On Autobiography, edited by Paul John Eakin (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, :q8q), pp. o.
Lyotard, Jean-Franois, Le Dirend (Paris: ditions de Minuit, :q8). Translated
as The Dierend: Phrases in Dispute by Georges Van Den Abbeele (Manchester
University Press: :q88)
Bibliography .oq
McKenna, Andrew J., Violence and Dierence: Girard, Derrida and Deconstruction
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, :qq.)
Moi, Toril, Patriarchal Thought and the Drive for Knowledge, in Between
Feminism and Psychoanalysis, edited by Teresa Brennan, (London: Routledge,
:q8q), pp. :8q.o.
Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman, (Oxford: Blackwell, :qq)
Moriarty, Michael, Discourse and the Body in La Princesse de Clves, Paragraph,
:o (:q8), pp. 686.
Obaldia, Claire de, The Essayistic Spirit: Literature, Modern Criticism and the Essay
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, :qq)
Perrone-Moiss, Leyla, Lintertextualit critique, Potique, . (:q6), pp.
.8.
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, Pour un nouveau roman (:q6) (Paris: Gallimard, Collection
Ides, :qo). Translated in Snapshots and Towards a New Novel by Barbara
Wright (London: Calder and Boyars, :q6)
Russkoe Bogatstvo, :6 (:q:8)
Said, Edward, Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, :q8)
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Quest-ce que la littrature: Situations II (Paris: Gallimard, :q8).
Translated as What is Literature? by Bernard Frechtman (London, Methuen:
:q6)
Saussure, Ferdinand de, Cours de linguistique gnrale, edited by Tullio de Mauro,
(Paris: Payot, :q8). Translated as Course in General Linguistics by Roy Harris
(London: Duckworth, :q8)
Scarry, Elaine, (ed.), Literature and the Body: Essays on Populations and Persons,
Selected Papers from the English Institute, :q86, New Series, no. :.
(Baltimore, Md. Johns Hopkins University Press, :q88)
Schaeer, Jean-Marie, Quest-ce quun genre littraire? (Paris: ditions du Seuil,
:q8q)
Showalter, Elaine, Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, in The New Feminist
Criticism, edited by Elaine Showalter (London: Virago, :q86), pp. ..o.
Volos inov, V.N., Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, translated by Ladislav
Matejka and I.R. Titunik (New York and London: Seminar Press, :q)
Young, Robert, White Mythologies: Writing, History and the West (London:
Routledge, :qqo)
Z

izek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London and New York: Verso, :q8q)
.:o Bibliography
abjection, 6, 6o:, 66, 68, :
Allemand, Andr, :8q, :qq n. ..
alter ego, see double
Andersen, Hans Christian, 6
art, :., ., , 6., o6, q., :q: n. :8, :q n.

Arvers, Flix, :
Asso, Franoise, :6o, :88 n. , :8q n. 6, :qq n.
.:, :qq n. .
Aubarde, Gabriel d, :86 n. q
Austin, J. L., 8q, 6, :8 n. :6, :8q n.
Baker, Ida, .
Bakhtin, M. M., 8
Balzac, Honor de, ., 6, :8, q, 8., 8, 8,
:.o, :., :8 n. :o
Eugnie Grandet, 8o, ::, :
Le Pre Goriot, :q
Banier, Franois-Marie, :q n. :, :q n. :6
Barthes, Roland, 6, ::q, ::, :, :8q, :6
:8 n.::, :q n. :, :q6 n. , :q6 n. :,
:q n. :q
Beauvoir, Simone de, :::, :q n. o
Le deuxime sexe, :o, q8:oo, :o6, ::, :8 n.
:q, :q n. 8
La Force des choses, ::, :q n. .q
Beckett, Samuel, q6,
Bell, Sheila, :q. n. ., :q n. :
Benmussa, Simone, :oo, ::o, :.
Blanchot, Maurice, ::q, :q n. :
Blot, Jean, 8, ., :8 n. :
Bondy, Franois, :q n.
Bou, Rachel, :qo n. :o
Bre, Germaine, :, :qq n. :q
Breton, Andr,
Britton, Celia, :., :8 n. ., :q6 n. q, :q6 n. :.
Brooks, Peter, 8:, :qo n. , :qo n. 6
Brulotte, Gatan, q, :q: n. :, :q: n. .
Butor, Michel, :q n. :
Caldwell, Erskine, :.
Calin, Franoise, :qq n. .
Camus, Albert, :.
La Chute, :
Ltranger, :., :
character, ., ., o, , 6., q8o, 8, 86,
q, :o:, :oq, :.o, :., :, :, :, :,
:6o
Chekhov, Anton, :, :8, :8o., :q n. .
Cixous, Hlne, :o, q, :q: n. .:
Compton-Burnett, Ivy, ::
Constant, Benjamin, ::
contact, q, ., , 6, ., 6, q, :o6,
:oq, :., :.8, :8, :, :, :88.
contamination, , 6o, 6., 6, 6, o, ,
8
see also pollution
Cubism, :q
Culler, Jonathan, :o, :q6 n. :
death, .:., 86, :oq, :, :6, ::8., :q:
n. .o, :q n. .
Deleuze, Gilles, , :8 n. 8
Demeron, Pierre, :, :q. n. ., :q8 n. ::
Derrida, Jacques, 8, :8 n. :., n. :, n.:,
:q n. :, :q n.
dirence, 8, :8 n. :., n. :
dirend, q, :, :., :8 n. :, :86 n. 6
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 8., ::, :o, :., :, :8q
n. .
The Brothers Karamazov, ::
Letters from the Underworld, :
double, :q, .o, ., :6, :, :o.
Douglas, Mary, :., :88 n. :o
criture fminine, ::, :q. n.
see also feminist theory, women writers
exclusion, :, , q:o, :, ., 6, 8, q, o,
8, q, 6:, 6., q, :.
zine, Jean-Louis, :q n. .
Fauchereau, Serge, :, :8q n. ::, :q6 n. :8
feminism, q8
feminist theory, :o::, q, :q. n. ., :q n. :
.::
Index
Finas, Lucette, :, 66, :8q n. , :8q n. q, :q
n. 6
Flaubert, Gustave, .
Salammb, :, :o
Fowler, Alistair, :q n.
fragment, 8, :8
Freud, Sigmund, 8:, 8., :
Fuss, Diane, :q n. .o
Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, :8 n. .o
Gazier, Michle, :q. n. , :q. n. 6, :q8 n. :o
gender, ::, :., ., .q, ., 6, 8:, q, q6,
q8:o:, :o., :o8:o, ::, :., :q n. q,
:q n. :o, :q n.
see also sexual dierence, woman
genre, :., :, o:, :o6, ::q., :, :q,
:6, :68, :q n. , :q6 n.
Gide, Andr, ., ::,
Les Faux-monnayeurs, :.o, :8 n. .
Journal des faux-monnayeurs, , :8 n. 6
Gilbert, Sandra M., :o
Girard, Ren, q, o., :8 n. :, :8 n. :8, :88
n. q
Gosselin, Monique, :q. n. ., :q8 n. :
Gubar, Susan, :o
Heath, Stephen, :q, :86 n.
Heidegger, Martin, , ::
Hemingway, Ernest, :8, 8., :.
Hewitt, Leah D, :q n.
Huppert, Isabelle, ::o, :86 n. , :q. n. , :q n.
:8
identication, qo, :oq:, ::, :, ::, :,
:q8o, :8., :q n. .o
intersubjectivity, , o, , 6, , 8q, 6,
o, , 6, q, 8, 86, 88q, q:, q, q,
::.:, :88 n. .
Irigaray, Luce, :o, q, :q: n. ..
Jakobson, Roman, , 6 , :8 n. :., :8q n.
Johnson, Barbara, :8 n. :, :86 n. 6
Joyce, James, :, :8q n. .
Kafka, Franz, :o.
The Trial, :8
Kaiser, Grant E., :86 n.
Kelly, Catriona, :q n. :6
Kempf, Roger, 8:, :qo n.
Knapp, Bettina, :q8 n. 6
Kristeva, Julia, 6o., :8q n. :, :8q n. .
Lafayette, Mme de, ::, :qo n. :
La Princesse de Clves, 8o:, :8q n. :, :qo n. .,
:qo n.
language, 6, 8q, .o, .q., .q, 6:,
6, q:, q, :.6, ::., :q, ::., :6,
:86 n. 6, :86 n. q, :8q n. , :q: n. .o, :q
n. .
see also words
Lazhechnikov, Ivan Ivanovich
La Maison de glace, :
Lee, Mark, :q6 n. :
Leiris, Michel, :6
Lejeune, Philippe, :., :q n. , :q8 n. q
Licari, Carmen, :., :8 n. :, :q n. .6, :qq
n. :
Lindon, Jrme, q
Lyotard, Jean-Franois, q, .:, :8 n. :, :86 n.
6
Man, Paul de, :q6 n. 8
Manseld, Katherine, ., ::, :88 n.
McCarthy, Mary, :q, :86 n.
McKenna, Andrew, :8 n. :
Marini, Michelle, :q. n. .
Marx, Karl, 8.
Maulnier, Thierry, :o
Mauriac, Claude, :q, q, :8 n. ., :q6 n. 8, :q
n. ..
metaphor, , , 8:, 8qo, q, :o:, :,
::, :6, :8:, :88 n.
Minogue, Valerie, :8q n. , :8q n. 8, :q6 n. :.,
:q8 n. 8
Moi, Toril, :qo n. , :q n.
Moriarty, Michael, :qo n. .
mothers, ., o, 6, , 68, o, :o, ::,
::, :., :q n. :6
Nelson, R. J., :88 n. 6
Newman, A. S., :q6 n. :
nouveau roman, :, :q, , q6, :.., :.6
Obaldia, Claire de, :q6 n.
OBeirne, Emer, :8q n. 6
Ollier, Claude, q6
other, , :o, ::, 8, q:, 6, 6:, 6, 66, .,
q, 8., 86, :o., :o8q, :., :8, :,
:6:, :8 n. .
Pascal, Blaise, :
Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich, 8.
Perrone-Moiss, Leyla, :q n. :
Phillips, John, :q. n. .
Picasso, Pablo, :q, :6.
Pierrot, Jean, :qo n. ::
Pinget, Robert, q
Pivot, Bernard, :86 n. .
poetry, , o:, 6, :.:, :8, :8 n. :, :8q
n. :
.:. Index
Poirier, Franois, :q n. .o
pollution, :., 66,
see also contamination
Proust, Marcel, ., , :.8, :, :8 n. , :8q
n. ., :q6 n.
reader, , :, :, :8, :q, 6qo, :., qo:,
q, q6, ::o, :., :., :8, :8o,
:, :, :8:, :68, :q, :8.
realism, :8, 8q, :., :.6, :6
Ricardou, Jean, :.6
Rilke, Rainer Maria, .oo n.
Rimbaud, Arthur, :.8
Ristat, Jean, :, :8q n. ::, :q6 n. :8
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, :., q, :8 n. :, :q. n.
Roey-Roux, Franoise, :q n.
Rykiel, Sonia, :q. n. :, :q. n.
Rykner, Arnaud, :o, :6, :8 n. ., :8q n. ,
:8q n. , :q. n. , :q n. , :q8 n. , :q8q
n. :, :qq n. .o
Said, Edward, :8 n. .o
Saint Phalle, Thrse de, :q n. o
Sallenave, Danile, :88 n. ::, :q. n.
Sand, George, ::
Sarraute, Nathalie,
Ce que je cherche faire, :.6, :.qo, :86
n. , :8 n. :, :q: n. .o, :q n. .
Ce que voient les oiseaux, 8q, :.6, :6,
:6, :q n. ,
Cest beau, 6., :6, :8q n.
Conversation et sous-conversation, 8., qo,
::, ::, :, :6, ::, :8
De Dostoevski Kafka, ., 8o, 8., ::,
:., :., :, :8, :., :, :8 n. :, :qo n.
8
disent les imbciles, :, .6, o:, 8, 6, 6.,
o, , 8, q, :o:, :oq, :q, :,
:6
Enfance, .o, ., .8, .q., 6, , 6.,
o, :, :o, :6, :68, :, :q n. :,
:q n. :, :q8 n. :.
Entre la vie et la mort, :q, 6, , 6, ,
8qqo, q, :, :6, :6, :, :q,
:6, :8, :q: n. :, :q8q n. :, .oo
n.
Lre du soupon, :, ., o, 8., ::q.o,
:., :, :q8 n. 8
Lre du soupon, :8, :q, 6, q, 8., ::., :..,
:8, :q, :., :q, :8 n. .:, :8 n. :,
:8 n. ., :8 n. :, :q6 n. 8, :q6 n. ::
Flaubert le prcurseur, :., :8q n. :., :qo
n.
Forme et contenu du roman, :.o:, :6,
:., :q n. .
Les Fruits dor, 6., o, :, 88, 8q, qo, q.,
:., :.68, :., :, :q, :, :6, :
Le gant retourn, :q n. , :q n. .
Ici, o, :8, :6, :6, ::, :88 n. ,
.oo, n. .
Isma, 6., :8q n.
Le langage dans lart du roman, :., :q: n.
:q, :q n.
Martereau, :, ., , 6, , 8, q, ,
, 8, 66, 88, q, ::o::, :6, :, :,
:6., :, :8, :q, :8 n. .
Le Mensonge, 6., :6, :8q n.
Ouvrez, 6., o, :8
Paul Valry et lEnfant dlphant, q., ::,
:., :.q, :, :, ::, :8 n. :, :8q n. :.
Le Plantarium, .:, ., , :, 6q, :, q,
86, 88q, 8q, q., :o, :oq, :oq::,
:6, :, :, :6o., :qo n. :., :qo: n.
:, :q n. :.
Portrait dun inconnu, :, ., , , 8, q, .,
, 6o, 68q, , , q, 8, 8, 88,
::o:, ::, ::q, :o, :, :, :o, :,
:, ::8:, :88 n. 8, :q: n. :, :q n. :6,
:q n. .
Pour un oui ou pour un non, 6., qq, :6, :q8q
n. :
Qui tes-vous?, q, q, q8, :oo:, ::o, ::., :8,
:8 n. ::, :88 n. , :q: n. ., :q. n. ., :q
n. q, :q n. ., :q6 n. :o
Roman et ralit, :6, :.
Le Silence, 6., :6, :8q n.
theatre, :, q8q, ::, :.:., :, :6, :8q n.
, :q8q n. :
Tropismes, , ., 6, 8, o, o, ::.,
:.8, :, :6, ::, :
Tu ne taimes pas, :, , 8, , 6., 6, :o.,
:, :q n. ::
LUsage de la parole, 68, 6o, 6., 6,
6qo, :, :8, :6, :6, :,
:8o., :88 n. , :q n. ., :q n.
Vous les entendez?, :, ., ., , 8, 6o, , ,
::, :8
Sarraute, Raymond, ::, ::.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, ., , , 8:, 8, qo:, :::,
::q, :6, :q: n. :6, :q n., :q n. .
Les Mots, ., :8 n.
Quest-ce que la littrature?, :8 n.
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 6, 8, q, .o, .:, ..,
., ., :6, :8 n. q, :86 n.
Scarry, Elaine, qo:, :q: n. :
Schaeer, Jean-Marie, :q n.
Schor, Naomi, :q n. :q
Serreau, Genevive, :q6 n. :q
sexual dierence, :o, :., .q, q, ::
see also gender
Index .:
Showalter, Elaine, :o
Simon, Claude, q
Smith, G. S., :q n. :6
Sollers, Philippe, ::q, :q n. :
Spatz, Erwin, :86 n. 8
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Uncle Toms Cabin, :
Tadi, Jean-Yves, :., :., :q6 n. ::, :q n. .:,
:q n. .
Temps modernes, Les, , ::, :.
Tihanov, Galin, :q n. :6
Tolstoy, Leo, :q n. .:
War and Peace, ::, :, :q n. ..
Tophoven, Elmar, :86 n. q
tropism, :8, ., q, 6:, q, 8o, 8., 88, q.,
:oq::, :., :6, :o, ::, :, :6o, :6.,
:6, :q, :86 n.
Twain, Mark,
The Prince and the Pauper, :
Valry, Paul, , , :, q., :., :.6, :.qo,
:8
La Jeune Parque, ::
Vikhrovksi, N., :o, :o, :q n. :6
violence, q, ., 6, 8, o., q, 6o:, 66,
q, :66, :8 n. :
Volosinov, V. N., 8q, :8 n. :
Wittig, Monique, 6, :8q n. 6, :q n. :o
woman, 8, q, q6:o:, :o6, ::o, :q: n. ., :q
n. :
see also gender, sexual dierence
women writers, q, qq:oo, :oq, ::, :qo n. :
Woolf, Virginia, , ::, ::., :8 n. :
The Years, :
words, :q, o., 8q, 6.6, , 88, q:,
:., :8, :68, :8:.
Wright, Barbara, :6
writing, , :., ., , 68, 6, 8qqo, q:,
q6:o:, :oq, :, :o, :q, :68, ::,
:, :, :8, :8o.
Young, Robert, ::, :8 n. .o
Zand, Nicole, :q6 n. :6
Z

izek, Slavoj, :q n. .o
Zola, mile, .
.: Index
c\xnni nor s +tni rs i x rnrxcn
orxrn\r rni +on: Michael Sheringham (Royal Holloway, London)
rni +oni \r no\nn: R. Howard Bloch (Columbia University), Malcolm Bowie
(All Souls College, Oxford), Terence Cave (St Johns College, Oxford), Ross
Chambers (University of Michigan), Antoine Compagnon (Colombia University),
Peter France (University of Edinburgh), Christie McDonald (Harvard University),
Toril Moi (Duke University), Naomi Schor (Harvard University)
:: J.M. Cocking: Proust: Collected Essays on the Writer and his Art
:. Leo Bersani: The Death of Stphane Mallarm
: Marian Hobson: The Object of Art: The Theory of Illusion in Eighteenth-Century France
: Leo Spitzer, translated and edited by David Bellos: Essays on Seventeenth-Century
French Literature
: Norman Bryson: Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix
:6 Ann Moss: Poetry and Fable: Studies in Mythological Narrative in Sixteenth-Century France
: Rhiannon Goldthorpe: Sartre: Literature and Theory
:8 Diana Knight: Flauberts Characters: The Language of Illusion
:q Andrew Martin: The Knowledge of Ignorance: From Genesis to Jules Verne
:o Georey Bennington: Sententiousness and the Novel: Laying down the Law in Eighteenth-
Century French Fiction
:: Penny Florence: Mallarm, Manet and Redon: Visual and Aural Signs and the Generation of
Meaning
:. Christopher Prendergast: The Order of Mimesis: Balzac, Stendhal, Nerval, and Flaubert
: Naomi Segal: The Unintended Reader: Feminism and Manon Lescaut
: Clive Scott: A Question of Syllables: Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Verse
: Stirling Haig: Flaubert and the Gift of Speech: Dialogue and Discourse in Four Modern
Novels
:6 Nathaniel Wing: The Limits of Narrative: Essays on Baudelaire, Flaubert, Rimbaud and
Mallarm
: Mitchell Greenberg: Corneille, Classicism and the Ruses of Symmetry
:8 Howard Davies: Sartre and Les Temps Modernes
:q Robert Greer Cohn: Mallarms Prose Poems: A Critical Study
.o Celia Britton: Claude Simon: Writing the Visible
.: David Scott: Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France
.. Ann Jeerson: Reading Realism in Stendhal
. Dalia Judovitz: Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes: The Origins of Modernity
. Richard D. E. Burton: Baudelaire in .8
. Michael Moriarty: Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France
.6 John Forrester: The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida
. Jerome Schwartz: Irony and Ideology in Rabelais: Structures of Subversion
.8 David Baguley: Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision
.q Leslie Hill: Becketts Fiction: In Different Worlds
o F.W. Leakey: Baudelaire: Collected Essays, ..88
: Sarah Kay: Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry
. Gillian Jondorf: French Renaissance Tragedy: The Dramatic Word
Lawrence D. Kritzman: The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French
Renaissance
Jerry C. Nash: The Love Aesthetics of Maurice Scve: Poetry and Struggle
Peter France: Politeness and its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture
6 Mitchell Greenberg: Subjectivity and Subjugation in Seventeenth-Century Drama and Prose:
The Family Romance of French Classicism
Tom Conley: The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French Writing
8 Margery Evans: Baudelaire and Intertextuality: Poetry at the Crossroads
q Judith Still: Justice and Dierence in the Works of Rousseau: bienfaisance and pudeur
o Christopher Johnson: System and Writing in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida
: Carol A. Mossman: Politics and Narratives of Birth: Gynocolonization from Rousseau to
Zola
. Daniel Brewer: The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France: Diderot and
the Art of Philosophizing
Roberta L. Krueger: Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse
Romance
James H. Reid: Narration and Description in the French Realist Novel: The Temporality of
Lying and Forgetting
Eugene W. Holland: Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Sociopoetics of Modernism
6 Hugh M. Davidson: Pascal and the Arts of the Mind
David J. Denby: Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, .,o.8.o: A
Politics of Tears
8 Claire Addison: Where Flaubert Lies: Chronology, Mythology and History
q John Claiborne Isbell: The Birth of European Romanticism: Stals De lAllemagne
o Michael Sprinker: History and Ideology in Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu and the
Third French Republic
: Dee Reynolds: Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space
. David B. Allison, Mark S. Roberts and Allen S. Weiss: Sade and the Narrative of
Transgression
Simon Gaunt: Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature
Jerey Mehlman: Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern
France
Lewis C. Seifert: Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France .o.,.: Nostalgic Utopias
6 Elza Adamowicz: Surrealist Collage in Text and Image: Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse
Nicholas White: The Family in Crisis in Late Nineteenth-Century French Fiction
8 Paul Giord and Brian Stimpson: Reading Paul Valry: Universe in Mind
q Michael R. Finn: Proust, the Body and Literary Form
6o Julie Candler Hayes: Reading the French Enlightenment: System and Subversion
6: Ursula Tidd: Simone de Beavoir, Gender and Testimony
6. Janell Watson: Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust: The Collection and
Consumption of Curiosities
6 Floyd Gray: Gender, Rhetoric and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing
6 Ann Jeerson: Nathalie Sarraute, Fiction and Theory: Questions of Dierence